Bubble Café

I promise I’ll go to Ho’s Bakery and try the bubble tea there, I do. I really do. Tomorrow perhaps. I know I’m boring you. But in the meantime on my way back home, following a week long holiday, facing reality, I picked up yet another traditionally flavoured beverage to calm my nerves and make me feel all happy inside… for who can feel anxious or miserable when they’re so full of tapioca bubbles they may as well be a beanbag?
Anyway, my overall point is that you must try the taro flavoured yosa milk bubble tea here. And you will do this. Else you shall be banished from all of the Manchester Unilocaldom. I have the power!
Disclaimer: ELH does in fact *not* have the power. But Taro. Seriously. Do it.
P. S. I also promise to be far more adventurous in my choices in future…

I first discovered Bubble Tea in Seattle of all places and then proceeded to hunt out this tapioca delight on the remainder of my travels down the West coast of American, where its really really popular.
So imagine my delight when I discovered a small café on Portland Street in Chinatown, back home in Manchester. Although the sign outside says open from 10am, it was closed, so i returned an hour later such was my desire for a bubble tea.
Luckily when I returned it was open and after perusing the menu, I decided to go for a papaya bubble tea with tapioca pearls, although you could get your drink with coconut jelly if you wanted or a mixture of both. Think I will try that next time, they even do hot bubble teas, which i’ve not yet had the pleasure, but not to worry, i think this café in Manchester will soon have me awarded the ‘Regular’ badge on my Unilocal app.
Once I have sampled all the flavours of regular bubble teas on their menu, there will be hot ones to try, then slush style, then the ones made with yosa milk. ..

I was ranting about how I miss having Bubble Tea after coming here for University and couldn’t find it anywhere. Then my friend told me there is one near Portland road en route to the city. I ran there straight away!(I’m joking. I actually took a bus but running sounds better).
Had a meal there as well and the staffs were very friendly. Ordered out Bubble Tea and they are as original as I expected. I normally go for the usual ‘pearls’ but they do have a mixture of other cocktails fruits or taro balls if you prefer that.
Its a cosy little café and its a perfect place to rest after a day in the city. It certainly does satisfy my Asian tastebud!

Yummm… it’s boba! Who would have thought these amazing slurpable balls would have successfully cruised all the way to Manchester, exposing themselves through a huge fat straw for the delight of all Mancunians? (p.s. not a good sentence to be read aloud.)
And I can honestly say — from all of my ball slurping experience — that this Bubble Tea is as authentic as it gets. The flavours range from the typical watermelon, green tea and coconut, to the traditional taro, red bean, durian, pearl, and original (which is a black tea). They also offer shakes, smoothies, slushies, and Yosa milk tea, which I learned is a non-​dairy oat product made from oat and oat bran.
Of course all drinks are topped off with that funky tea-​sealer that safely plastics your precious slurp-​able delight. It was indeed delightful. A little piece of Taiwan all the way over here in Manchester.
And now, for your Unilocaling enjoyment, I shall quote directly from their website. Behold:
«One thing is for certain Bubble Tea is not a fad, it is a trend. This drink is addictive, if you have had one before you’ll know what we are talking about!!»

This is a really really super strange establishment. Located on Portland Street in the midst of Chinatown, this vendor specializes in strange teas, deserts and smoothies, but also sells noodles, and baguettes!
The drinks are the main thing, and they come under four main headings, these are Bubble Tea, Yosa Milk, Bubble Slush and Hot Banana Tea. Each of these varieties is available in a variety of flavours, mainly fruit but the odd different one such as ‘Green Dew’. I will in time try each of them so that I can tell you all what they are (the headings don’t give much away do they?). As it stands though, I’ve only tried a Lychee Bubble milkshake, which was lovely, and has ‘tapioca pearls’ at the bottom. I don’t know what these are but it was damn tasty! They look exciting as well so I’d recommend going to have a look for yourselves. These drinks are between £2 and £3.
They also do a range of deserts such as Cheesecake and Jelly, as well as normal smoothies and tea and coffee.
Most strangely though, they also sell noodles and hot snacks. The menu for food only has 7 or 8 items on, but they range from liver sandwiches, to prawn spring rolls, to vegetable noodles and soup!

Located on the fringes of China Town, the Bubble Café is one of the newest additions to the Mancunian Cheap Eats roster. I decided to pay it a visit last weekend, mainly because I’m a sucker for a large pitcher of Bubble Tea, and also because I’d heard rumours that they served one of my favourite Vietnamese treats, Banh Mi.
If you’ve never had Bubble Tea before, then you’re missing out on a strange and decidedly tasty treat. The term «tea» is a bit of a misnomer for it actually as it’s really more like a milkshake. The «bubbles» are the large squidgey tapioca pearls which sit on the bottom of your glass, and which are great fun to suck up with the huge fat straw stuck into each glass. I decided to go for the Chocolate flavour and it was delicious. Ice cold, velvety smooth and decidedly sweet it almost reminded me of the Nesquik I used to slurp down as a child. If you’re feeling a bit more adventurous than me, it comes in a wide array of decidedly exotic flavours, including Lavender, Red Bean, Durian and Taro. Yum.
However, the main reason I was there was for the Banh Mi (called «Bubble’s Sandwich» on the menu). Banh Mi isn’t just any sandwich — indeed, it could very easily be called the King of Sandwiches. A rice flour baguette is stuffed with roast pork, pâté, ham, herbs and a staggering array of pickled vegetables before being topped with a spicy sweet sauce. Unfortunately, the Bubble Café didn’t have any of the sauce to hand when I was there on Saturday, so I had to settle for a weird kind of mayonnaise instead. This was a bit of a disapointment, mainly because it contained far too much coriander and tasted as though it had Maggi stock liquid applied to it. However, the rest of the sandwich was spectacularly tasty, and a real lunchtime bargain considering it was massive and only cost me £3.80.
The Bubble Café needs a bit of work, but then again, it’s a relatively new outlet and so probably needs a bit of time to find its feet. However, I certainly intend to return there very very soon (if only to see if their Phở is anywhere near as good as the stuff served up in Tampopo) and sincerely hope that it succeeds in its aim to get the citizens of Manchester addicted to Bubble Tea!