taro (a sort of purple sweet potato with a nutty flavour) milk tea.The most popular milky bubble tea flavours include:

Some flavours have become so popular that you’re almost guaranteed to see them on the menu, no matter what bubble tea bar you visit. Since its beginnings, people have been experimenting with fruit juices or flavoured syrups and powders in their bubble tea. This is still one of the most popular ‘flavours’ for the boba tea version with tapioca pearls. The most traditional bubble tea is simply Assam tea shaken over ice with either milk or a non-dairy creamer, and sweetened to taste. That’s an average of 380 new bubble tea shops opening per year since the invention of boba tea in 1988 – and that’s not even taking into account independent retailers and smaller franchises plying their trade here in the UK or over in the US, Japan and Canada, not to mention the rest of Taiwan!įar from being a fad, it looks as though bubble tea is here to stay. There are currently over 6,500 stores selling bubble tea around Taipei alone, and at least a further 4,070 bubble tea bars worldwide. There’s an average of 380 new bubble tea shops opening per year since the invention of boba tea in 1988 Where in the world can you find bubble tea?īubble tea is now a worldwide phenomenon, with bubble tea bars popping up in most large towns, cities and shopping centres. The new drink became a regular on Chun Shui Tang’s menu, and in 2008, twenty years after its conception, the new-look bubble tea (or boba tea) was still making up most of their sales. She quickly passed it around for everyone to try – and they loved it! This was called fen yuan – a sweetened tapioca dessert.Īt a dull moment in the meeting she decided to tip the dessert into her cup of iced Assam tea. Liu Han-Chieh’s product development manager, Lin Hsiu Hui, had brought a Taiwanese dessert to the meeting. He would vigorously shake the teas over ice, which created frothy bubbles on top of the drink – the very first ‘bubble teas’.īut it was during a staff meeting in 1988 that the bubble tea we have come to know was really born. He was inspired after a visit to Japan where he saw coffee being served cold, and began experimenting with different fruits and syrups to flavour his teas. The founder, Liu Han-Chieh, began serving cold Chinese tea in his shop in the early 1980s. One particular teahouse in Taiwan, Chun Shui Tang, is generally accepted as being the birthplace of bubble tea.

Qq teahouse