Taiwanese Tea: Bubble Storm in a Tea Cup

Tea enthusiasts can debate endlessly about the perfect cup of tea, but on some salient features all tend to agree—the beverage should be hot and served in a cup or a glass. But in the past few months, a new kind of tea is finding takers in different Indian cities. It is colourful, chilled, extremely sugary and has a taste that is a cross between a milkshake and Lipton’s. You don’t drink it. You slurp it through an incredibly fat straw. And bobbing at the bottom of its tall cup are soft chewy tapioca pellets.

Bubble tea, invented in Taiwan sometime in the 1980s, has been a rage in Southeast Asia and is now making inroads here. Several establishments, from outlets like Lemon Leaf and Eat Thai to tea lounges like Tea Trails, serve the drink in Mumbai. Bengaluru has the Big Straw and Teaze, and Delhi has Bubble Teas and QQs: The Bubble Tea Shop.

“It took a long time coming, but it is finally here,” says Adnan Sarkar, proprietor of the newly-opened Dr Bubbles Chai Specialist, a bubble tea establishment in Mumbai’s Bandra suburb, which will have two more outlets soon. Sarkar got hooked to bubble tea in his travels abroad, often wondering why it didn’t have a presence in India. “To me, bubble tea makes tea cool. It does away with the pomp and ceremony of tea, and makes it a young and fun thing to do,” he says.

Most establishments in India currently import tapioca pearls and other add- ons from Taiwan, but some are now experimenting with the format. These include drinks with black, milk, green and oolong teas as a base, and besides tapioca pearls, fruit- flavoured poppers, aloe vera jelly bits, or even assorted chocolate chips.

Sarkar believes bubble tea will gradually move from being a curiosity in India to a daily staple. He finds many who try it for the first time relishing it. “They love the fact that you have to both drink and chew the beverage,” he says.

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