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| - Prefacing this, I just want to say there are some nontrivial features that I do enjoy about the drinks I ordered--unfortunately, just not when compared to other tea shops. This is an honest and comprehensive review of Boba Tea Company at Scottsdale Fashion Square.
TL;DR for those uninterested in reading:
Pros:
-creative marketing
-quality jellies (sold as "nunus")
Cons:
-expensive, even overpriced, for the sizing
-milk teas taste like watered down skim milk
-childish demeanor
-terrible regular black boba
-misadvertised massively-carbonated drinks
I ordered a medium Thai Tea with black boba and a medium Summertime (watermelon, lemon, and white tea with lychee "nunu") with black boba. Surprisingly, the size of these drinks was smaller than expected, medium standing a meek 11.5cm, which is roughly 50% smaller than most large sizes for the same price or more.
The menu layout is childish and confusing for regular boba tea consumers. Kudos to their creative team for trying to send a cute vibe to customers, however contextual meaning is lost in translation trying to decipher what "nunus" (jellies) and "gobis" (popping boba) are among their list of "sidekicks and bottoms" (toppings.)
Mentioned above, I ordered 2 drinks. For the Thai tea, the first impression I received was bland. Instead of the expected bitterness of black tea, I got something akin to day-old stale tea mixed with Thai-flavored milk. The cream did not stand out as half-and-half as advertised, but rather more watery with less presence and flavor. Nevertheless the classic Thai flavor was evident both up front as well as in an aftertaste, albeit lacking.
Upon purchase, the boba was inconsistent in toughness and retained a gummy residue. About 20 minutes after purchase, the boba began to lose its structural integrity and was closer to an unset Jell-o than boba.
This boba tea shop does not rinse their singular type of standard tapioca boba or saturate it in anything but water, so there was an absence of any sort of flavor. I was recommended to try their "gobis" if I was looking for a more flavorful experience.
The second drink I ordered was a mix of watermelon and lemon flavors, white tea, lychee jellies, boba, and sprite. Advertised as "slightly carbonated," my first impression of this drink is anything but slightly carbonated. Any expected pleasantness of the watermelon and lemon white tea is drowned out by the overbearing carbonation.
I do appreciate the firmness and chewy bite in the lychee jellies, as well as a great lychee flavor. However, much like the boba in my first drink, the boba on this one was overcooked and runny with an unpleasantly gooey residue coating the outside. Many of them possessed a tough, chewy center, suggesting inconsistent cooking times and temperatures.
Overall, I feel this shop is a white-washed attempt at a growing cultural phenomenon targeted to an immature teenage audience. I felt like a child trying to order my drinks, and was treated as such when asking for clarification on their invented words. The "cream" in their milk teas is just skim milk. I tried to scratch for 2 stars, but I just couldn't do it considering how many faux pas the shop passes off as consumer-ready.
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