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| - I remember back when the very first Chatime opened at Bay and Dundas a few years ago - I used to go there almost everyday because it was the best bubble tea place at the time. Thanks to the Chatime boom, a lot of other bubble tea chains in Asia made their way over, and now I'm happy to have a nice selection of bubble tea shops to go to when I'm craving it.
So that's really the problem. There's so much competition around Chatime that it's not as special as it once was. Just around this Chatime location, there's a Jules, ShareTea, Chachago, HiTea, Tea Shop 168 (ok, don't ever go there), and CoCo just recently opened a bit down the street. Chatime has a pretty good roasted milk tea that other stores don't carry, and their taro milk tea is probably the best (but for a taro slush, go to ShareTea for their Handmade Fresh Taro). Their QQ grapefruit juice is pretty good too, and their hot almond milk tea with sweet potato is my favourite drink from them (although it's unfortunate that it's only available for a limited time in the winter).
While that seems like a good selection, I find that a lot of their other drinks tend to taste bland if you ask for less or no sugar. Now, you might suggest to just get more sugar - but the point of the drink is not to just taste the sweetness of the sugar, it should be infused with other flavours. Their oolong milk tea tasted like water without any sugar, when it should taste like oolong tea with milk. Also, their fairy vanilla milk tea was flat out gross, would definitely not recommend.
The line at the Bay and Dundas location is ridiculous at times, so it's nice to see that this location is emptier and there's a lot of table space for you to hang out, or even study as they provide wifi. Now even though they tend to be emptier, the service is a lot slower as there are fewer workers, so you'll still have to be patient. I find the workers here to be much friendlier than the other Chatime locations, so that's a plus.
Although Chatime is not my favourite bubble tea place anymore, I am thankful for what they've brought to the Toronto bubble tea scene. Thanks to them, we're not just stuck with Tenren's, Tea Shop 168, and Bubble Tease (ehh...) anymore, so for that I give them an extra +1.
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