Taiwanese cold tea drink shaken frothy with milk or fruit flavouring and served with wide-straw-sucked chewy tapioca pearls — the global street-drink that became a café category.
The Taiwan invention
Two Taiwanese tea shops claim the credit: Chun Shui Tang in Taichung began serving cold Taiwanese milk tea in the early 1980s; the addition of tapioca pearls is attributed to a staff experiment there around 1988. Liu Han-Chieh of Chun Shui Tang and Lin Hsiu Hui are both cited. The drink was commercialised rapidly as boba nai cha (pearl milk tea) and spread across Taiwan before going global in the 1990s.
The pearls
Standard tapioca pearls are made from cassava starch, formed into small balls, and cooked until translucent and chewy — a texture the Taiwanese call Q. Dark “tiger pearls” are flavoured with brown sugar. Popping boba, a later innovation, contain fruit juice inside a thin gel membrane that bursts in the mouth.
The shaker
Bubble tea is shaken vigorously over ice in a cocktail shaker before being poured into the cup — the “bubbles” in the original name referred to the foam created by shaking, not the tapioca pearls.
Varieties
The drink has spawned hundreds of variations: fruit teas, cheese foam toppings, taro milk tea (purple), matcha latte boba, brown sugar milk tea, and non-tea bases like fresh fruit smoothies. The only constants are ice, customisable sweetness, and the option of tapioca pearls.
Find more foods by letter
Bubble Tea starts with B and ends with A. Browse other foods along the same letter.
Foods that contain a letter from "Bubble Tea":