Boba Tea: It Looks Like Swamp in A Cup

I have this thing, where when I get introduced to something I like, I tend to over do it. The first time I had Adobado Fries; I had it another seven times that month, and pretty much burned out on it. (But there will, eventually, be a blog entry about Adobado fries, fear not.) So, Boba tea is a recent discovery for me, and because I usually get it at the farmers market on campus, which is once a week, I will not over do it. Right? Wrong.

(from the place that sells it on campus)

As it turns out, they sell it at both the Mediterranean café and the Vietnamese place across the street from my house. It’s 2.50 for the tea, .50 for them to add Boba.  1.00 for extra extra Boba.

The issue I have, is that when I get it at the tent on campus, I always want more tapioca pearls per sip, and I end up doing this thing where I drink way more tea each sip to get a couple more tapioca pearls in the sip. If anyone is with me when I’m drinking it, the reason why I don’t say anything and probably have a crazy fearful look in my eye, is because it just turns into this really intense internal battle of tapioca pearls and tea management inside my mouth.

(Good on a hot day.)

I think the reason why it freaks people out is the same reason that French Onion soup freaks me out: it’s two really different textures and ingredients mixing together, maybe awkwardly.  Cheese melted into a broth soup is NOT NATURAL. Now, I’m already not the biggest fan of Swiss cheese, and I don’t exactly remember how it all went down, because I probably blocked out some of the details. But, essentially what happened is that I was like “this is a broth soup which means it just goes down the hatch like liquid” but there was some melted cheese that latched on to the back of my throat and just chilled there because I guess I forgot to CHEW because it was BROTH soup. So, I basically had a string of melted cheese that I had to fish out the back of my throat that was already half way down my esophagus. IT. SUCKED. SO. HARD. I almost barfed. And not in an “I just watched a crazy episode of BSG about new Caprica” good kind of twisty barf, but like an “I just had to gag myself, and now I might blow chunks” kind of bad barfing situation.

Now, I haven’t found too many people that like Boba, for example:

“It’s gross.” – Lauren Tracey

“It looks like swamp in a cup.” – Stephanie Laufenberg**

“Oh my god, you’ve never had Boba tea?” – Alexa Megna

“We don’t give tasting samples.” – Girls that works at J.Wok tent, the place that sells the tea on campus.

“No decaffeinated tea.” – The man behind the counter at the Mediterranean café.

(**Thanks for the title of this blog, even though you don’t remember saying this.)

(This is a swamp.)

So, because I have major issues with the amount of tapioca pearls, I decided to get extra the last time I ordered some. This was also a mistake, because it turned from me not getting enough tapioca pearls each sip, to getting too many. I was also able to isolate one, bite it in half and evaluate the texture. I decided it was like a gummy bear. Then, the idea of gummy bears in my tea freaked me out. A lot.

(This is a Gummy Bear.)

I need to address the claim that “Boba tea, it looks like swamp in a cup.” This is… not true. Being from Louisiana, I consider myself somewhat of an authority on swamp things. Or, I should say things that are “swamp like in nature.” The Boba that I get is always Mango tea and as a result I get an orange pinkish drink with black at the bottom. (See picture below.) If I were to find a swamp, and scoop a ladle of water from it and put it in a cup, I imagine that it would be grey-brownish water with possibly a layer of algae at the top.  So, the algae would be grossly hanging from the ladle and I would have some trouble getting it all in the cup without touching it, but I would eventually get it in there, and it would look like a gross goopy green algae, like, snot looking thing on top the water in the cup. Then there would be the layer of water that you wouldn’t exactly be able to see through because so many dirty particles would be floating around. Eventually, all the dirt would settle to the bottom, and I will concede that it might look VAGUELY like the Boba, but unless they have a Boba tea called “swamp water” I’m not inclined to believe that Mango Boba Tea looks like real swamp water. 

(Maybe it looks a little swamp like.)