If you’ve walked
around Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain or Prenzlauerberg recently, you’ll notice
there is a new drug fuelling the masses. It is of course bubble tea.
This strange
concoction comes in hundreds of different variations and is sold by everyone
from McDonalds to coffee houses. Nothing could be more in hand for the debonair
of the city. McDonalds describes it as “the drink innovation of the moment;”
celebrities across the globe are tripping over themselves to be photographed
gulping the lumpy drink-cum-meal.
Bubble tea: Bright colours for the big city |
Bubble tea is
what happened when a fishermen took a pile of eyes and drank them in his
morning coffee. The drink, also known as ‘Pearl Milk Tea,’ comes in a sealed
plastic container similar to the water capsules distributed as part of in-flight meals,
only larger and full of edible marbles known as tapioca.
It takes tea to a
new level, a kind of libation Nirvana where yogurt, milk and juice forget
their differences and get up, close and personal with jelly.
For years, tea
was the elixir of choice, keeping communities from China to Chennai sitting
under the mango tree chatting about/with spirits. Sugar spent centuries
lobbying a way into the equation. Lemon only found its way in on rare
occasions. Even the spirits needed visas. Coffee had to wait millennia to make
an intercontinental landing. Then there was bubble tea.
The craze started
in the early eighties in Taiwan, according to Wikipedia, who says:
“Bubble teas
are typically of two distinct types: fruit-flavored teas and milk teas. However,
some shops offer hybrid "fruit milk teas". “
I must have had
the latter, a pale orange soup with lumps of jelly loitering at the bottom.
Piercing the plastic sealing with a straw more suited to piping, I tentatively
moved my head down towards the drink. As soon as I started sucking, the lumps of
jelly, which up until this point had sat quietly on the base of my drink,
started shooting into my mouth like tennis balls fired by a machine.
I tried to call for help but skirmished
jelly balls flew from my mouth. Children looked at me as if they’d
time-traveled into Madame Tussauds and were staring at a 3D replica of the
Alien.
The bubbles, more
like soggy berries, now sat at the bottom of the glass alone. Whereas
before they had thrown themselves into the straw, without the liquid they
wouldn’t move. Which makes me
think bubble tea is not meant for consumption, but to be seen with; a drinks
accessory.
The girl at the
counter in the bubble tea store (a chain dedicated to the plague??!!) offered
me instructions but I passed telling her I’d consumed liquids before. “Getting
a balance between juice and bubbles is key,” she’d said.
My new balance is
100 per cent tea. With bubbles tea stores cropping up like forgotten STDs, it is
time to take a stand, people. Because bubble tea is not a drink, it’s a movement. And
only tea can stop its curse – it's time to burst the bubble, people.
I'm personally quite partial to a bit of bubble tea... helps the concentration (in the trying to not spill any). Not sure they are ready for it in Moabit though as my local bubble tea emporium recently closed down. It seems I was one of their few customers.
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