Drink Me Silly

Moderation and I are not close friends. I live life large and unfortunately, I’m getting larger for it! 

Still, most times I enjoy it. I especially enjoy being able to champion small businesses like the one owned and operated by the Kua family in SS2 Mall. I’ve written about them before and I have shared my thoughts on Chatime. No doubt they are all positive, since I keep going back. 

Passionfruit Smoothie and Taro Milk Tea. One was too sweet, the other too...taro.

This visit saw me being introduced to the limited edition Taro teas. Made from Taiwanese taro, the drink is touted to be great for adding fibre to your diet. Fibre-schmibre! The bottom line is if it tastes good. Sensitively put, the taro series has gained the lowest marks in the satisfaction index. It’s not foul, but it is weird. There is stickiness in the texture I dislike. It is a drink, but it feels like pea soup. There is a sandy, grainy texture reminiscent of the mouth feel (though not taste!) of chiku or sapodilla. It feels unpleasureably like a diet shake. I had it with 50 percent sugar. And boy, does it need the sweetness! I think the addition of pearls would have helped a lot, but I will not be repeating the experience! 

The Grapefuit QQ had loads of nice bits!

The Grapefruit QQ with half sugar and full ice was still mega sweet. The boba and the pearls went quite funkily with the pink grapefruit sacs and it was a refreshing long drink! 

The Passionfruit Smoothie was ordered with 30 percent sugar, but even that was massively sweet. I think the fruit series can easily taste fine with no sugar at all! 

The Grass Jelly Milk Tea is the top seller on the Chatime list. And truly, it is a magnificent tribute to the franchise. We had it with 50 percent sugar and it was so good. There is a robust, rich mouth feel, with a lovely creaminess that is impossible to duplicate. The grass jelly is completely like no prepackaged cincau (I know, because Kit has tried buying and melting store bought grass jelly to replicate the silky texture). It needs to firm up overnight in the fridge, so the Kua family sometimes has to turn down customers because there is simply none ready to serve. 

The lovely three-levels of the Matcha and the beautiful symmetry of the milk tea with grass jelly!

The Japanese Matcha Tea Latte with pearls and coconut jelly was gorgeous. It was such a luxurious sight, with the three distinct levels of green, white and black. The bits made it all the more fun, with the caramel-syrupy tapioca pearls being a lovely foil to the dense matcha.

I just can’t get enough of Chatime!