More Cafes across Boston Start to Offer 'Bubble Tea'

By Stephanie Rubenstein

CHINATOWN – Tapioca pearls shot up through the straw, as Jennifer Hsu drank her bright green bubble tea with a friend in a cafe. The two freshmen at Boston University poured over their calculus homework and entered endless numbers into a calculator, sipping on a familiar drink from their native Taiwan.

"It reminds me of home," Hsu, 18, said. "This is my first two months away from home, and it's like a reminder."

Although Hsu said she drinks the tea because of its familiarity, her friend Jessica Kao, 19, said she drinks tea out of habit.

"Back home, I drink [bubble tea] everyday," Kao said. "Since I drank it a lot at home, it seems natural for me to drink it [in Boston]."

As more cafés begin to offer the neon-colored teas on their menus, the Taiwanese drink is becoming more popular and readily available to customers throughout Boston.

"More and more people are staring to drink bubble tea," said Moon Vuont, 25, who works at Dong Khanah Restaurant. "At first, many people do not know what it is, but they try it and then they keep coming back for more."

Many Bostonians have traveled to Chinatown for the drink, where posters of the colorful teas with boba, tapioca pearls, are hung on nearly every restaurant and café window in the neighborhood. The drink is called bubble tea, because when the tea is mixed with the tapioca pearls, it looks like bubbles.

"More Americans are starting to come in because they are seeing people on the street holding [bubble tea], and they want to try something new," said Vanessa Tang, 40, the barista at Rainbow Café.

The local spot has been offering bubble tea on their menu for the past 20 years, when the café was first opened. But they have recently been receiving more customers asking for the tea, Tang said, especially during the summer when people wanted to cool down from the heat.

"I grew up with bubble tea when I was in Taiwan," said Ruby Chou, owner of Black Ruby's Tea and Coffee. "But it used to be a dessert."

Chou said she always dreamed of opening her own café, where she would be able to serve the drink. After moving to the United States to continue her studies, Chou began to work on her idea. Ten years later, she opened the store.

Black Ruby's opened last year in Boston, where Chou said the drink has become popular among students in the area.

"I even got a phone call at 11:30 p.m., after I closed the store," she said. "The girl [on the phone] was asking if I was still open.
She was dying for bubble tea and had called every café in the online directory until she found me."