Bubble Tea
by Jacqueline M. Newman
Chinese Tea
Winter Volume: 1999 Issue: 6(4)
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Hot in the world of tea and teenagers, are bubble teas and the tea houses that serve these teas of the nineties. The love of bubbles is not new, but what are these black bubbles?
They are made from cassava after the root is peeled and grated, and the juice extracted. This is a complex process that yields a tapioca flour later compressed into brown or white cakes. When left In powdered form, it is used as a thickener. When round, they are known as tapioca pearls, and if boiled, can be found floating in sweet drinks. When cooked and cooled in thin rectangular sheets, they are known as grass jelly, and as such, used in some dim sum foods. Poured and set thicker and cut in cubes, they are used in a Malaysian dessert called ABC. As balls for bubble tea, they are the size of a fresh large green pea. They expand when cooked, and these days, most come from Taiwan.
Bubble tea beverages can be found in cities on both coasts of the United States, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. In the Toronto suburb of Markham, there is a Bubble Tea House that sells nine drinks made with black tea, ten made with green tea, and a dozen others they simply call milk tea.
The first place to have Bubble Tea on the East coast was Ten Ren Tea and Ginseng Company, only selling it in their Flushing store. One of the newest places in New York to sell these teas is the Saint's Alp Teahouse in Chinatown, one of a chain of almost fifty eateries in Asian countries. Several restaurants in Queens serve bubble and hot teas. One is a Cantonese-style rice, noodle, and barbecued meat eatery called Tasty Pavilion, another a fusion facility called ABC Hong Kong Chinese-American Restaurant. At Saints Alp, the menu advises "nutritional Pearl Tapioca" is a unique beadlike formula "extracted from sweet potato, cassava root and brown sugar." Ten Ren's and supermarket packages lists almost the same ingredients.
Some call bubble tea a "Chinese cola," others "the item that requires rewriting of tea history." One person actually dubbed them "the McChildren's drink of the decade." No matter, sample the bubbles that Liu Han-Chieh brought to Taiwan in 1983 made for you or buy the dried balls at a Chinese supermarket and cook your own. If black bubbles are not for you, try tea in a can; some of them have another popular bubble of the moment, made from carbonation.