|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
Also this issue: Lebanese-y Going |
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||||
August 8-14, 2002
food
Bubble tea. They say it’s an acquired taste.
Frankly, I’m addicted. Sweet and chewy black pearls of tapioca are engulfed in green tea, black tea or red tea and flavored to your liking -- from radioactive, bright-green apple to lavender-colored taro.
Also called tapioca tea, pearl tea and boba nai cha, this Taiwan-original drink can be served hot, but cold is preferable. You suck up the marble-sized pearls through a wide, colorful straw, like a juice drink or an icy shake.
There's primal satisfaction in a drink you can chew. Is that why the Taiwanese call it "boba tea"? (Boba is slang for big boobies.)
New York, San Francisco and L.A. have several cafes dedicated to bubble tea. Ray's Café and Tea House and K.C.'s Pastries are among the restaurants that serve the drink in Philly, and the all-bubble, all-the-time Bubble House (which adds food to its menu on Sunday) opened last fall in University City. But a particularly serendipitous place to taste the stuff is the Shogun Serendipity Cafe.
Formerly the Japanese restaurant Shogun, Serendipity is a lighter, breezier version brought to you by the same owners. They've replaced Shogun's austere environment with high ceilings, candy-colored paint and cafe-style tables.
Serendipity features 28 different flavors of "special tapioca tea drinks." They've got the green tea and the red tea varieties in flavors like strawberry, rose, blueberry, black bean, wheat germ and sour plum. But they've also got a delicious, inventive menu of Japanese, Chinese and even a few Korean and Vietnamese dishes.
Fresh, delicate sushi and creative appetizers like the teriyaki-drizzled scallion beef roll and the decadently salty bacon scallop roll were among the Japanese standouts. Basil beef, a typical Chinese dish, was chock-full of vegetables, laced with a rich basil sauce, notably light on the cornstarch. The "Serendipity Salad" was a tangy melange of golden raisins, pine nuts, carrots, mixed greens and basil vinaigrette.
Unable to wait until dessert, my boyfriend and I tried two different types of bubble tea. In fact, we sucked out the last black glob from our shared passion fruit red tea before our food even came. (Feel free to read loads into that last sentence.)
We followed that drink with an apple green tea, which had a sharper, earthier taste than the red tea, but equally satisfying.
Finally, after our meal, I picked one of the stranger options, the peanut red milk tea. Getting it to go, we sipped the nutty-but-odd, slightly grainy tea as we walked down Arch Street. We could barely finish it (did I mention bubble tea is filling?), but we still made sure to suck down every last pearl.
Shogun Serendipity Cafe, 1009 Arch St., 215-592-8288.
 |
-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there |
