Tea-Do in Philadelphia, PA

I found myself spending the day exploring Philadelphia. While wandering around the city, I ended up in Chinatown. I honestly had no clue that Philadelphia had a Chinatown before I wandered into the neighborhood, but while there I decided to get something edible. This ended up being boba tea from a place called Tea-Do.

Tea-Do had food on the menu, but I decided to only get a drink here. I had a mango smoothie with boba and mango jelly floating around in the drink. The smoothie was good, cold, and very refreshing. I liked the mango jelly, but the typical tapioca ball boba like this always make me want to brush my teeth badly. It's something about their sticky consistency.

I did enjoy my smoothie from Tea-Do. They had a better selection of drinks available than many other boba tea places I've visited and offering food was nice as well.

Boba Station Food Truck in Hollywood, FL

 

I was in south Florida not too long ago and found myself at the Food Truck Invasion event that happens every Monday at Young Circle in Hollywood. I had already eaten dinner for the evening at the nearby Mauro's Pizza, but I decided to find something for dessert from a food truck. That dessert soon morphed into a glass of boba tea from a truck called Boba Station. 

Boba Station had a nice selection of different types of iced teas, milk teas, and smoothies on the menu. All of the drinks included a choice of boba toppings.

I had a ginger green tea with mango popping boba balls. Out of all the boba tea that I've had in the past, Boba Station was the first to use actual tea. It seems everywhere else I tried uses powdered flavors that seem similar to Kool-Aid. I suppose that isn't a bad thing for all the exotic flavors, but using flavor powder doesn't seem very much like tea either. At the Boba Station truck, actual iced green tea was used in the drink. Real slices of fresh ginger were floating around in the cup giving the tea a nice spicy kick. The mango flavored boba was recommended by the person taking my order as a good flavor combination with the ginger. I have no complaints about my boba tea from this truck!

Berrywise Cafe in Altamonte Springs, FL

Berrywise Cafe is one of the many self-serve frozen yogurt shops that have been opening all over Central Florida lately. Berrywise is located in a Wal-Mart shopping center in Altamonte Springs and serves both yogurt and Lollicup drinks.

During one visit, I tried their frozen yogurt. Berrywise Cafe had eight different yogurt flavors to choose from in the self serve machines. They gave small sample cups to taste the flavors first, then you get a larger bowl to fill with your selections. After filling the bowls with yogurt, there is an adjacent topping bar stocked with all sorts of good stuff like fruit, jellies, and candies. After the dessert is made, it is weighed at the cashier and charged by the ounce. A word of warning though, the bowls are quite large and the machines dispense yogurt very quickly. If you're not careful filling your bowl, you can potentially end up with an expensive dessert.

I decided on a twist of California Tart and Pomegranate yogurt topped with strawberry and kiwi.

On another visit, I ordered something from Berrywise Cafe's Lollicup menu. I had an Avococonut Smoothie with tapioca balls. I've gotten the flavor once before at another Lollicup and liked it. This particular drink was just as good.

I initially didn't know what to think about these self serve yogurt places, but I liked my visits to Berrywise Cafe. The whole self serve aspect allows you to self ration yourself, rather than the typical ice cream/yogurt shop where you have to order a set size. The flavors of yogurt I tried were all really tasty too!

Boba Tea from Bento Cafe in Orlando, FL

I had a Mango Boba Tea from Bento Cafe in The Plaza in Downtown Orlando. While I was pleased with the food here on a previous visit, their boba tea was a disappointment. It tasted like plain taro milk tea to me with no hint of mango. Lollicup still has the best boba tea in Orlando...

Lollicup in Orlando, FL

I stopped in Little Vietnam in Orlando, FL. The plan was to eat lunch, probably at Viet Garden, but I got distracted by the sign in Lollicup's window. I've had boba tea from Lollicup several times in the past, and when I noticed this location now served food I decided to give it a try.

I started with the obligatory overpriced boba drink. I had a Papaya Avocado smoothie with boba. It was good, although I think they may have added lots of extra sweetener to the drink. There were huge jugs of fructose under the counter, so I'm assuming those go into the drinks. A fruit smoothie is sweet enough as it is and the boba makes it sweeter. There's no need to add additional sweetener on top of that. It was almost $5 for a small drink, but a dessert elsewhere would most likely also be about the same price. I've found that smoothies are definitely the way to go at Lollicup. All of the tea drinks remind me of a bottle of Orbitz with way too much ice (although I did love that stuff).

Moving on the the food, a Summer Roll was ordered. Sort of like the healthier Vietnamese version of a Chinese egg roll, the summer roll consisted of shrimp, pork, cilantro, cucumbers, and vermicelli, all wrapped in rice paper. Peanut sauce was served on the side. I love how the rice paper is somewhat translucent so you can see the brightly colored contents of the roll.

I have heard of Vietnamese Subs, or Bánh mì, but have never tried one. The sandwich consisted French bread stuffed with sliced pork, cucumbers, onions, cilantro, jalapeno peppers, assorted pickled vegetables, and possibly more toppings that I'm overlooking. I was really impressed with the sandwich. It reminded me somewhat of a Cuban sandwich with the pork and pickles, only improved with the rest of the toppings. This good sized sandwich was only $2.50. That's less than a Boba drink!


For a bit of an update, Lollicup no longer serves food and are back to only serving beverages. It's unfortunate, especially since I haven't found a better summer roll elsewhere in Orlando!

Avococonut Boba Tea

I had an Avococonut Boba Tea from the Lollicup in the Little Vietnam section of Orlando. Avocado and coconut is a good combination...

Food From UCF & Boba Tea

I ate a buffet served at the University of Central Florida. The selection was somewhat limited. It consisted of salad, rolls, potato chips, cookies, and some sort of pasta with a mystery meat. The meat had the consistency of ground beef but was too light in color and looked more like pork to me. Maybe it was the sauce that lightened up the meat. My guess is that this was supposed to be Beef Stroganoff. It actually tasted surprisingly good...

Later on, I stopped at the Lollicup in Winter Park on the corner of University and Semoran Blvd. I has a passion fruit boba tea. It was good, but after a while it became way too sweet. My last cup of boba tea from Tkettle in New York City was better...

NYC Angelica Kitchen & TKettle

After eating a very meaty lunch, I had the complete opposite for dinner. I ate organic vegan food from Angelica Kitchen in Manhattan's East Village.

I ate a Dragon Bowl, which consisted of rice, tofu, lentils, kale, zucchini, carrots, and some wonderful seaweed. This was served with a tahini dressing. I know many meat eaters would look away in disgust at this meal, but it really was delicious. Everything was good, with the exception of the lentils which tasted very bland. I'm not sure what the shredded purple seaweed that was used in the Dragon Bowl was called, but that is some of the best seaweed I've ever tasted. It was by far my favorite flavor in the whole Dragon Bowl.




After finishing dinner at Angelica Kitchen, I had dessert at Tkettle. They served what they called bubble tea (although I think the correct name is boba tea), and other variations on the idea, along with some actual food. Boba tea is very cool stuff. It is a type of tea that originated in Taiwan that is filled with floating tapioca balls. I ruined my vegan dinner by ordering a avocado milkshake. They blended half of an avocado, milk, and ice, and then poured the milkshake over the tapioca balls. An avocado milkshake is definitely not a combination that I would have thought of, but it wasn't bad. Drinking it without sucking up the tapioca balls left it tasting like it needed some salt, but with the tapioca, the milkshake was very good...