Brown Sugar Matcha Tapioca (黒糖抹茶タピオカ)

Alright, ready for some mediocre boba?

Today my friend invited me out for some mediocre boba. Yes, she absolutely did not recommend it, describing it as worse than the boba you get from pho places (if you know what I mean). My town does not officially have any boba shops, but has a couple that sell boba. Apparently, not really good ones, but hey, trying it just to have the experience and say I’ve tried it at least once should count for something. The places that do offer it here are small dessert shops/cafes. It’s probably popular with the locals since maybe they haven’t actually had good boba, and the bigger cities are pretty far away because I saw a bunch of people buying them at the festival pop-up the other day.

There were quite a few options on the menu, but I had figured why not go basic and standard with a milk tea. The thinking was that you surely can’t go wrong with a milk tea…maybe if I ever go again I’ll try the matcha, since this is, after all, Japan. Then I actually got to the store, and I saw they divided the menu into a special section “king milk” and a regular milk tea section. I decided why not just go for the best thing while in there…and so I went with a brown sugar matcha boba drink, from the “king” section.

The first words I said after I took a sip were “Everything’s a little off.”

So, it’s a little aesthetic, but I really care about taste right. The lady did say to mix it up, and when I did, dark green matcha (powder? Settlement?) mixed in to the drink, but the brown sugar on the sides refused to mix in. I could only really get it off if I scraped it off the sides with my straw, so I kind of gave up. Normally in brown sugar milk drinks the brown sugar will eventually sink to the bottom and kind of mix in, but even at the end it refused to let go from the sides. Wild. The brown sugar by itself was pretty brown sugar-y and roasty though, which is a good thing?

You’d also think the drink would be good, but it ended up tasting mostly like milk. It was good milk, I guess (I usually drink non-fat if I can), but not really even like sweet milk, unless I really put effort into getting some of that brown sugar on the side. Not even much matcha flavor, which was odd. If I concentrated, maybe there’s matcha? Maybe? Otherwise, mostly milk, which was kind of a bummer. Even the bottled matcha latte I had last week (post coming soon…) could have been better.

And now the moment of truth, the boba…It was definitely below average, but surprisingly was not the worst I had actually. It was somewhat cooked, but really could use being cooked much longer. The consistency was inconsistent (ha!), as the texture ranged from meh, to completely hard in the middle. The average boba in the cup was relatively chewy in the center, not even hard, though the outside was not bad. It did end up essentially being a jaw workout though. I ended up only drinking milk most of the time, which was a little weird, and had a bunch of boba left at the end. Unfortunately, not a fun time, and the boba itself did not have any flavor. The brown sugar left on the sides helped a bit though.

Will I get boba from this place again? Probably not, unless it’s an individual drink. The boba itself is probably not worth trying again…unless for some reason there’s a big change and raving reviews? I might try some of their other desserts/treats, but that’d be for another day, and not even for the blog. Oh well. Do I have regrets? Maybe on the drink choice, but on the whole, not really. Experience had.

Details: Brown Sugar Matcha (Tapioca); no whip cream; from a dessert shop who shall not be named