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Las Vegas, Nevada
"This is enough to curl your hair," Van Aken said.
Unlike other first-time tasters, they weren't put off by the boba, which some first-timers consider ... well, weird.
"It's different," Moeller said. "I wouldn't think weird, especially."
"It's strange to have it come up in your mouth, but it doesn't have any particular taste," Van Aken said. "It looks neat in the straw."
In Las Vegas, bubble tea is a big trend with the young generation. However, four women from the High Desert Red Foxes of the Red Hat Society were asked to do a sampling of boba tea and to write a review for a journal. These members were accustomed to English tea time and cucumber sandwiches, but they headed to Volcano Tea in Las Vegas' Chinatown to have a taste. In the particular boba shop that the women went to, the clientele is mainly Asian -- Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. In Vegas, location determines the clientele of the bubble tea cafe. In other areas, customers have a broader age range and some stores have mainly non-Asian customers. Wherever the bubble tea shop is in Vegas, for the most part the consensus on boba is a positive one.
After the tasting, Mitton confessed that when she was asked to taste bubble tea, she hadn't known what to expect.
"I didn't know if it was going to be in a pipe," like a hookah, she said.
"I think it's kind of neat," Taylor said. "It's kind of a surprise (Rinella)."
St. Louis, Missouri
"This is the first time bubble tea has been done outside the traditional market," said Tainxaio Qian, co-owner of the shop in University City. "It's usually done in a place with a large Asian community. This is kind of an experiment. You'll notice that our menu is entirely in English, while most bubble-tea shops have menus in both English and Chinese."
"It is very difficult to take something that is a colossal success in another culture and hope it will become the rage here," (Tom Pirko of BevMark, a food and beverage consulting company) said. "One would have thought that green tea with all of its purported medicinial benefts would have taken off here, but it hasn't."
St. Louis Bubble Tea opened in 2002 with the goal of turning St. Louis residents on to the popular Asian drink. Tainxaio Qian, his wife Shu Qian, and Jimmy and Josephine Chu together own the store. Other restaurants in the St. Louis downtown area offer bubble tea, but the four wanted to specialize in only bubble tea. St. Louis Bubble Tea boasts 101 flavors in plastic cups decorated with Asian cartoons and Chinese horoscopes. The place is popular among Washington University students.
"It will be interesting to see what happens in St. Louis. I think the fact that the store is located near the university will weigh in its favor," (Joe Simrany, president of the Tea Council) said. "Young people are usually much more willing to experiment with new things (Meyer)."
Madison, Wisconsin
"I feel like I've been places in my life and seen a lot of things, but nothing could have prepared me for this," said my former roommate as she gingerly sucked the "snacks" from her iced green tea."
But another companion, on a recent visit, was a little more blunt in his disapproval. He didn't appreciate the grating pop music, the TV hanging from the ceiling, and the open, bright, chartreuse space full of laughing students playing the card and board games on hand at Pochi.
Pochi Tea Station opened in late 2002 just when University of Wisconsin-Madison students were returning back to campus. The cafe serves 74 different flavored drinks, and each day the volume of drinks sold is increasing. Pochi's manager, Gabrielle Sentoso, is from Indonesia and she raves about the popularity among college students. Rinaldo Imanto is Pochi's owner and he originally opened Pochi's first store in Seattle. Madison is the third city in his growing franchise, and the next location is set for Kansas.
Pochi is possibly the most fun you'll have with a non-alcoholic drink. Or, as far as a couple of my friends are concerned, the least (Derby).
Austin, Texas
Kelly Carter's first encounter with bubble teas came at UT-Austin. "We're lucky to have coffee shops in Tyler," says Carter of her hometown. Though she wasn't instantly attracted to bubble tea--"I thought, 'I don't want to tase this' " --she's a convert.
"Don't be scared of it, " she tells skeptics.
And there are skeptics.
"I don't want little balls in my drink."
"They're slimy."
"Looks disgusting."
We heard it all. No pearls for them, thank you. Just give them a big ol' Texas glass of regular iced tea.
Bubble tea is a great hit in Austin, Texas. University of Texas students are populating the hip cafes and there is a growing loyalty that hits back at the notion of a temporary fad. Teas can be pricey, averaged $3 to $4 a 16-ounce cup. On a college student budget, that can hurt but it isn't stopping many students. Anshu Sawhney, a pharmacology student at UT indulges daily in bubble tea and admits to spending "way too much money" on boba. The price of boba can be more expensive than a Slurpee, a drink at Starbucks, or any other quick beverages. For some, bubble tea isn't just a beverage.
However, for a student like Carter, that tea is probably dinner. "It usually fills me up pretty well (Crider).
Tampa, Florida
Linda Sierra walked into Joffrey's Coffee & Tea Co. on W Hillsborough Avenue a few weeks ago and couldn't believe her eyes. There was the beverage she had been searching for since leaving San Francisco five years ago: boba tea.
"I was shocked," said an excited Sierra, who lives in Town 'N Country. "I called my husband and I called my son and then I called my daughter and said, "I found bobas in Tampa." And then I hung up on her."
Anh Nguyen, a 26-year-old entrepreneur who moved from China to Northern Tampa when she was 2, opened the cafe that Linda Sierra was so boggled by in the above quote. Anh and her husband Patrick decided to open a bubble tea franchise in this unexpected location in Florida. At first, Anh wanted to open a cafe with only bubble teas but when she realized that "nobody knew what they were," she decided to choose a franchise that would have offer coffee and tea as well. Thirty percent of Anh and Patrick's business is bubble tea sales, and the next closest place to get boba is a few hours away in Orlando (Ripley).
Boston, Massachusetts
I met another first-timer, Guy Lanni, 22, from New Hampshire, visiting friends in Boston for the night. His face said it all. He chewed and thought, his brow rumpled. "It's like an extra course in my meal," he finally said, smiling to reveal a row of bubbles lodged under his upper lip. "A bonus, I think."
Dijonna Fasoli, 21, from Boston has had only one bubble tea flavor: grape.
"I tried it because I love Super 88," she said. "I wanted to try something new - plus there was a long line."
However, she found the drink too avant garde for her palate.
"I didn't like it," she added. "You really shouldn't chew something you drink."
Which seems to be a common reaction among non-Asian consumers of bubble tea. Terri Li Bolles, also 21, a half-Korean Brighton resident and student at Boston University, has tried the drink three times - opting wholly for the milk tea, choosing cappuccino, amaretto and pistachio - and understands the Asian draw.
"I tried it the first two times from Asian friends," she said. "I think it's something we are familiar with because of our culture."
Lollicup Tea Zone is the largest bubble tea franchise worldwide. One of its cafes in Boston has had a mixed variety of reactions to this burgeoning drink. Martin Jiang, the Boston franchise's owner, says that when his store just opened around 2 to 3 percent of customers were curious non-Asians. Now, there are about 35 percent loyal non-Asian customers. Jiang feels that Lollicup's presence in the Boston area has really de-mystified the bubble tea drink because he offers free samples for undecided customers. Jiang concludes,
"Our stores are now as comfortable for non-Asian customers as they are for Asians (Hollands)."
New York City
Mary Bigloo, 20, was among the uninitiated. "I would always see people in the street having it and I would imagine what it must taste like," the New York University student said.
One weekend she could contain her curiosity no longer. Upon the insistent urging of a friend, Bigloo took the plunge. She ordered her first bubble tea.
"It's not bad," she said, sipping a honey green tea with tapioca. "These tapioca balls are kind of space-age. I feel like I'm in the future."
Dozens of bubble tea cafes are appearing all across New York City and in rapid succession of one another. In Chinatown, there are seven boba outlets within three blocks of each other. A few bubble tea shops are opening near Cornell's Ithaca campus, and they've become representative of the memory of being back in the city. Peter Ng is the manager and co-owner of Saint Alp Teahouse and he has strategically located his boba branch near three universities --NYU, Cooper Union, and The New School. College students and coffee seem to go hand in hand, but in the city Starbucks is feeling some negative setbacks.
Ng, whose bubble tea cafe is surrounded by three different Starbucks within a two-block radius, said, "Starbucks employees come to us, actually. They buy tea with tapioca and they go back there and drink it (Lam)."
After looking at articles from different regions from the US, there are several questions to be asked about bubble tea. Does it belong to the hip trendster? The Asian? The college student? Does it matter? Is bubble tea establishing permanent roots in the United States? We don't know how many years it will take to figure out the answers to these questions or if they can even be answered with the passing of time, but what we do know is that bubble tea is here, NOW. So get up, go out, and try it! Develop your own American perspective and ask questions about bubble tea!
Crider, Kitty. "Austin Tea Party: Trendy sippers all over town are slurping up the gooey treats in bubble tea, the hottest new cool drink." 17 April 2002. Austin American-Statesman.
Derby, Samara Kalk. "Pochi Tea puts in a little extra something." 17 October 2002. Wisconsin State Journal.
Hollands, Courtney. "New drink craze makes its way to the South Shore." 3 September 2003. The Patriot Ledger.
Lam, Andria. "Balls replace bubbles in latest New york liquid craze." 4 April 2002. Washington Square News (NYU).
Meyer, Michelle. "U. City shop hopes tea bubbles over." 23 April 2002. St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Rinella, Heidi Knapp. "Something Different: Tiny Bubbles." 10 March 2004. The Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Ripley, Jackie. "Gaga about boba? Get it here." 7 September 2003. St. Petersburg Times.
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