Anyone traveling inside Taiwan must have noticed the incredible number of drink shops.

Lots of Taiwanese people will come out of those shops, holding a big plastic glass containing colored drinks with lots of little black balls at the bottom and a big straw poking out. Those drinks are called “bubble tea”, you must have heard of it as it’s now trendy in Western countries.

Bubble tea actually comes from Taiwan. If you tasted it, you would know why it’s so popular. The classic one is black tea, milk and sweet bubbles of tapioca, but there’re different variations. Sometimes black tea can be replaced by green tea and for those who are lactose intolerant or vegan, there’re varieties without milk or with soy milk, and sometimes there’ll be fruit juice with or without tea. But the most important thing are the bubbles: bubbles of tapioca can be replaced by bubbles of taro or other kinds of bubbles. There’s also a bigger type of bubble called “boba”, which is actually slang for big boobs!

Today there are 5 of us that want bubble tea. In Donghai there’s a famous shop, so popular that they opened another shop in Fengjia night market. We’ve wanted to try their bubble tea for a little while.

It’s actually a small stall near the Donghai night market, with only space for two workers, who were struggling between calls and orders from the customers on site. We eventually got our order and brought it back to T-life.

Most of us chose the fruit juice because it sounded so tasty on the menu. Two of us chose kiwi flavor (a new one), one of us chose the sugar cane and lemon flavor and I chose the one with winter melon (a classic taiwanese fruit) and lemon.

At the first sip, we were unanimous in our opinion about the bubble tea: it was so delicious… The taste of the fruits were pretty strong, and for those who had lemon, it wasn’t too sour. The shop made their fruit juices well balanced, mellowing out the taste of the sugar cane and sweetening the winter melon. The one with kiwi was a bit more like a light smoothie than juice, and you could find pieces of kiwi in the drink.

The last of us chose a classic flavor, brown sugar with milk. It’s actually her first choice in the Donghai area and she’s used to order this flavor at this shop, because the amount of sugar and milk aren’t too much, which makes the taste of tea more prominent.

About the bubbles, most of us chose the chewiness of the glutinous tapioca pearls and one wanted to taste the bubbles of taro and sweet potatoes, which were more pasty than glutinous.

It was pretty easy to finish our drinks as it was so tasty but we ended up so full, the size of drinks were so big!

小確幸黑糖鮮奶波霸 (A Little Happiness Bubble Tea)
Address: No. 66號, Lane 3, Section 5, Taiwan Blvd, Longjing District, Taichung City, Taiwan 434
Phone number: 0980 237 895
Facebook: 東海小確幸-黑糖鮮奶珍珠