When it comes to boba , the exact origins seem to be steeped in mystery, often with multiple locations, originators, and backstories involved. There are two competing claims are from the Hanlin Tea room in Tainan, Taiwan, and the Chun Shui Tang tearoom in Taichung, Taiwan.
According to Hanlin Tea Room, back in 1986, Tu Tsong-He who was the teahouse owner at the time invented the drink. He saw tapioca balls in the Ya Mu Liao market and decided to add them to black milk tea.
On the flip side we have Chun Shui Tang’s whose founder claims he first started serving Chinese tea cold after visiting Japan and witnessing the famous Japanese iced, cold brew, and Dutch brew coffee back in the 80s.
This resulted in some new locales opening as chains under the teahouse’s umbrella. But the real inventor is credited as Lin Hsiu Hui, who was the product development manager at the teahouse.In 1988, she decided to dump her fen yuan, which are the sweet confectionary tapioca balls into her cold tea. The result was a hit and became a wildly popular drink at the teahouse and the rest of Taiwan.
BOBA THE LEGEND
The word “boba” can refer to either a broad category of chunky drinks — including everything from iced tea with tapioca pearls to fresh juice loaded with fruity bits — or black tapioca pearls themselves. Boba tea, bubble tea, and pearl milk tea — in Taiwan, zhenzhu naicha (珍珠奶茶).
In its most basic form, the drink consists of black tea, milk, ice, and chewy tapioca pearls, all shaken together like a martini and served with that famously fat straw to accommodate the marbles of tapioca that cluster at the bottom of the cup.
The pearls are made from tapioca starch, an extract of the South American cassava plant; Tapioca pearls start white, hard, and rather tasteless, and then are boiled inside huge, bubbling vats and steeped in sugary caramelized syrup for hours until eventually they’re transformed into those black, springy tapioca pearls we’ve come to know and slurp.
The Atlas BOBA HOTPOT?
Here at Atlas Handcrafted we ADORE hotpot and we love our boba as well, that's why we have decided to create Asia's only BOBA Hotpot. Served warm or cold, our unique hotpot platters take your boba experience to the next level. Enjoy the communal vibe of using mini ladles to dig for your favorite pearls and toppings!
Some of our unique toppings include:
- Black Pearls & Gold Flakes
- Taro Balls
- Sweet Potato Balls
- Mini Green Tea Chewy
- Mini Taro Chewy
- Mini Sweet Potato Chewy
- Mini Black Sesame Chewy
OKINAWAN MILK TEA
We make our milk tea using whole leaf black tea grown under the Japanese sun, complete with Japanese brown sugar and Hokkaido milk. Our exclusive milk tea is second to none and can only be found online at Atlas Handcrafted.
Discover more hotpot platters here. It's the perfect gift for that bubble tea / boba lover you know is dying to get creative! Discover Boba your way!