What is Bubble Tea?
So what is Bubble Tea and how is it different for to your normal tea? Bubble tea has been around since the 1980s and it is already quite big in many Asian countries, but recently it has become a global phenomenon. The tea is shaken to produce bubbles and is served with an edible topping, but as we soon learned, that doesn’t really cover it.
Biju
Biju is a new bubble tea room in Soho. Founder Nick invited us to to try some of his creations. Nick had gone out to Asia and had worked in a bubble tea room before he set up Biju.
Unlike most other bubble tea rooms, ‘who are in it for a quick buck’, Nick’s painstaking research and his passion ensures he has done things properly. Biju uses fresh organic milk in its tea, unlike most of its competitors who use powder. Nick and his team go to incredible effort to make every tea fresh and have made a significant investment in equipment. Many of the ingredients and jellies are made daily.This makes an incredible difference to the taste as we discovered.
Honeydew milk and sweet egg pudding
We start with the Honeydew melon with egg caramel pudding, a fruity milk. The honeydew melon was truly delicious and very refreshing and the sweet egg caramel was a delight.
Next up was a Jasmine Green milk tea with classic tapioca pearls, the original bubble tea ingredient. The classic pearls are balls of starch. Their texture is extremely satisfying to chew as you suck them up through your straw with your tea. The whole thing was delicious and totally different to our first tea.
We then tried a passion fruit iced tea with basil seeds, another unique and satisfying topping. It was the perfect thing for a summer day. It was delicious and I could drink it every day. We also tried a chocolate with tapioca pearls as seen above. In fact we ended up trying all sorts of different teas.
We were extremely impressed with our first experience of Bubble tea at Biju. The variety of the different teas was amazing. The tea was also so fresh and real. You could really taste the high quality ingredients. If there were a Biju next to me I would be in there every day and who knows? I wouldn’t be surprised if there was someday. I don’t think this is a short term trend. If your in the area make sure you try one because it is a new experience and if you don’t you will be missing out. Ask for help if your not sure what to choose, Nick or his staff are always keen to help. Make sure you go to Biju if you want a proper experience.
45 Old Compton Street, Soho.
Passion Fruit Iced Tea with basil seeds
