On balls in the mouth

[beetiger]

I’m having a minor obsession with bubble tea, right now. Sweet and chewy and creamy and complicated and silly-looking, requiring inexpensive but clearly specialized equipment to do it right. I haven’t been able to find someone in Westchester making it, though, and I feel silly taking a trip into Manhattan for, well, a soft drink. I liked Orbitz too, in its day. Somewhere in my files I have a food-scientisty formulation sheet for making roughly that.

However, I don’t like caviar at all. I especially don’t like salmon roe, which to a first approximation looks quite a bit like the tapioca bits in bubble tea. But it’s not chewy, it’s squirty. And you don’t eat it with a straw.

Personal taste is a quirky thing.

Comments

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Orbitz was interesting, and I really wanted it to succeed, and I really wanted to like it, but it didn't taste very good at all.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

I hate salmon roe too, for the same reasons, but I love flying fish roe. They're tiny and crunchy and bubbly and so orange, and don't forget the look on your friends' faces when you tell them what the stuff is on the California-maki they just ate.

I like tapioca products in general -- I think I developed a taste when I thought I was gluten-intolerant and went on a wheat-free diet -- but I haven't quite been able to get into bubble tea, somehow. I love it on principle. I would've liked Orbitz if the flavors weren't so darned weird. What I really want to find is a place that does some of the more authentic Thai desserts, like the pink tapioca-and-agar jellies our campus Thai association used to serve at events. I don't know what possesses restaurants to serve mango sticky rice and ginger ice cream, when Thai desserts are traditional, simple, and so good...

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Boba tea good! (You'de never guess that from the bubble tea community on LJ I belong to, woulcha?).
Tea Ren has decent mail order supplies and I've had all their flavors. They are, except for ones I don't like the taste of anyhow like green bean, good. I am tempted to get the green apple and peach drink powders just to drink without boba.
The local asian supermarket has freezer section individual boba tea kits, and HYOOG! 8 inch square blocks of (it looks like precooked) tapioca balls that are shelf stable. The HYOOG! block isn't very practical, but if you ever want one for a party - let Paka and I know and we can ship one out to ya.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I adore bubble tea!

I inflict it on all my friends!

It's a Good Thing about being on the West Coast: Bubble Tea everywhere, in hundreds of flavors. At least one place makes ice cream blends with bubbles. Not just American flavors -- sesame-flavored, taro-flavored, and durian-flavored. (I don't care for the last one.) A Very Good Thing.

[tygermoonfoxx.livejournal.com]

Oooohhhh....*sighs in rapture* I have GOT to either make me some of this or find a place that distributes it. It sounds absolutely heavenly.

[neillparatzo.livejournal.com]

I have a half-drunk bottle of Orbitz in the fridge.

From 1996.

Written on the side of the bottle are all the fridge cleanings it has survived.

[orb2069.livejournal.com]

You know, on a purely philosophical level, I really want to love tapioca drinks. It's got round stuff in it, and I like round stuff. I like Tapioca pudding.

But I had an oriental drink with 'dragon pearls' in it one time when I was in California, and I just coulden't stop thinking about boogers.

(PS - I forgot to add your name to my 'frequent viewing' filter. And I miss stuff like this! Sigh.)