Vivi bubble tea ues1/21/2024 Nevertheless, this beverage is a delight: The root beer-colored boba is bouncy, and the burnt sugar syrup that sinks to the bottom has a flavor reminiscent of melted chocolate caramels from a top-flight chocolatier. “The foam on top is the crème brulee,” the guy tells me when I ask, though it closely resembles the dense “milk cap” or “cheese tea” found at other chains. The “crème brulee” part adds a French touch, but also lets you know there’s no actual “cream” in there - the same dodge used by non-dairy products all over America. “Stir it up before you drink it,” the counter guy tells me. What you get is a beverage with brown and white layers that sag into each other, making for a striking appearance. The last step involves putting your plastic cup in a countertop contraption that simultaneously seals the top with paper and plastic and wraps the cup in further plastic with a stag’s head logo. When ordered, there’s lots of whirring, stirring, and pouring behind the counter. Foremost is a cold beverage called “brown sugar Deerioca crème brulee milk” ($6). Nevertheless, five signature beverages are prominently displayed on the electric menu board, and most customers seem to stick with those. The number of available beverages is limited to 14 in five categories, though most can be customized with the quantity of ice, amount of sugar, type of tea used (Assam or oolong), addition of coconut or rainbow jellies, and whether served hot or cold. The ingredients include pure cane sugar and tapioca pearls manufactured by the company. Seen on cups and signs, the trademark is a stag with prominent branching horns, as if borrowed from a ski lodge in Canada. It’s a scientific operation, and the purity and expense of the ingredients is said to be one of the Alley’s hallmarks. The activity behind it might remind you of an apothecary, as the preparers wield measuring beakers, shallow ladles, pestles for muddling, sieves, spoons, and stirrers like junior pharmacists. A counter - which looks too small for the number of employees working there - dispenses the tea. The space is laid out like a small figure-eight, with a back room boasting picture windows that look out onto an adjacent pocket park. Since making its debut this month, a line of young people regularly mobs the place. The store enjoys a prime location right on Cooper Square across from Cooper Union’s historic Foundation Building, famous as the site of an Abraham Lincoln address. One of the latest newfangled shops is the Alley, the first East Coast branch of a fast-growing Taiwanese empire that since its opening in 2015 has established 300 stores in locales as far flung as Canada, France, Australia, and California. And some of them even boast that they eschew the powdered teas of the past, emphasizing that they brew teas to order or use fresh fruit. Chains like Vivi, Kung Fu, Tiger Sugar, Ten Ren, Gong Cha, and Boba Guys seem to be opening stores all over town at a fever pace. Today, the proliferation of bubble tea establishments in the city, along with restaurants that serve bubble tea as a sideline, has been dizzying. The rear room provides vistas of a pocket park.īut, sure I loved the bouncy boba - tapioca balls the size of swollen ball bearings, sucked up through a straw so wide and ostentatious that it suggests the tapioca was the whole point.
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