Bubble Tea: A unique drink

For those who do not know, bubble tea is traditionally black milk tea with boiled tapioca pearls originating from Taiwan. Nowadays you can find all different kinds of flavors and toppings at the countless bubble tea stores around the world. Today I want to talk about the idea of a liquid snack and how bubble tea could be considered one.

Why?

Because bubble tea isn’t a common drink (unless you can make it) you want to enjoy the moments when you can drink your no sugar, no ice, large milk tea with bubbles. I think because it is a drink that some people would be inclined to drink it while eating food and therein lies the issue. The special part about bubble tea is that the pearls add to the tea and having other solid food blobs in there ruins the pearls. So instead of having a cohesive drink you instead get like spicy chicken mixed in with your pearls and that is not quite as popular.

Shouldn’t it be in the category of a dessert?

It totally could be! I think what makes bubble tea unique is the fact that you can just go out and have bubble tea with friends. It’s a strange mix of a dessert and coffee (including the caffeine and price) and due to this I think it deserves its own category: liquid snack. There are also other drinks that I think belong in this category but bubble tea is definitely the one I drink the most.

What other drinks are considered liquid snacks?

The first one that comes to mind is sugary coffee drinks. I don’t mean a black coffee with some cream and sugar. I mean a java chip frappuccino with extra whip since it’s more like a chocolate milkshake than a coffee. Another drink that popped into my head is a chunky fruit smoothie. I’d say a cold smoothie with strawberry chunks would also be considered a liquid snack. Of course you have something like soylent but I’m going to pretend that doesn’t exist.

Conclusion

I really like bubble tea. Like a lot. And there’s a bubble tea emoji in unicode 13: 🧋

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