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| Bubble Tea from Cafe WOW in State College |
Then finally, on my most recent visit to State College, the Bubble Tea place was open. Hooray!!! Let's do this. We entered into the cute little Bubble Tea cafe called Cafe WOW. They offered tasty looking Taiwanese pastries, smoothies, milk teas and fruit teas. You could select either a clear based tea or a milk based tea for your Bubble tea. The kiddos picked their teas. They chose milk based teas. I also wanted to try a milk based tea. As they were waiting for their beverages, I studied the menu a little longer. They offered delicious flavors such as Honeydew, Vanilla, Banana, Peach, Strawberry, Papaya, and Pineapple.
However, I wanted to try a unique flavor. A few flavors listed definitely intrigued me. What did Taro taste like? What was Red Date Longan? How would Lavender or Jasmine taste in a Bubble milk tea? Red Date Longan and Taro kept jumping out at me for some reason. The barista at the counter was waiting patiently for me to decide. I was really struggling to make a decision but was also becoming anxious at making the barista wait so I just went with Red Date Longan.
Once we all had our beverages, we took a seat outside at a little metal bistro table. Nervously, I studied my drink. The bubbles in the tea were black. I pictured them being translucent, like real bubbles. Why were they black? They were also a lot bigger than I was expecting. I am not a fan of tapioca but for whatever reason, I was expecting clear, tiny tapioca bubbles in my tea. These were large, jelly like bubbles. There was a slightly reddish beige tint to my tea as well. It looked a little like chocolate milk to be honest. Unfortunately, it did not taste like chocolate milk.
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| The kiddos enjoying their tea. |
I stabbed my wide purple straw through the plastic covering of my tea and nervously took a sip. A bunch of "bubbles" came through the straw. Slowly I began to chew them, expecting them to taste like squid ink or something. The texture was definitely a little weird, but not horrible. It was a starchy texture. To be honest, they really didn't have much flavor to them at all. If anything their flavor reminded me of the little Japanese dough covered ice creams called Mochi.
Turns out, I didn't mind the bubbles at all. The taste of the red date longan was just okay though. There was date pulp in the drink along with the bubbles and the flavor wasn't sitting well with me. For whatever reason it did not dawn on me when I ordered my drink that red date longan was a type of date. Why did it not occur to me? I mean the word date was included in the name of the flavor right? Right. That will go down as one of the world's great mysteries along with all the other idiosyncrasies I have made in my lifetime.
In closing, Bubble tea is a fun drink that you have to sip slowly in order to avoid choking on the bubbles.
Chrissy
