Crunchy Matcha Milk Tea (サクサク抹茶 ミルクティー) – Gong Cha

Today I took my new neighbor on a central Sapporo day tour! We walked around, saw all the Sapporo basics around the station area, and I ended the trip with boba for the bus ride home. We were already at the bus stop, and Gong Cha was the closest.

The new “seasonal” option doesn’t come until August 8th, so I’m left with either the option to try something on the normal menu, or the new “crunchy” cookie series. I’m not sure why they’ve made this a limited series, but maybe because milk foam and cookie crumble are both options that appear during limited runs, they might have wanted to make use of the inventory. There’s a chocolate milk option, but I went with the matcha, since I technically want to try that one on the normal menu. I really was going to skip this series, but since I didn’t have any other personal choice today, I decided why not. The ice wasn’t adjustable, probably because of the milk foam.

It’s kind of a hard drink to mix or swirl because of the cookie on top, and sticking the straw in is hard to move around with the boba on bottom and ice on top. The initial matcha was strong, but had some kind of odd flavor mixed in (the sweetener?), with a slight matcha bitterness from time to time. The boba had a distinct boba flavor today, and the fake Oreo crumble added a nice crunch and cookie flavor. I think this one was basically very similar tasting to the “first flush”.

Details: Crunchy Matcha Milk Tea; less sugar; pearl; from Gong Cha (Sapporo Akarenga Terrace)