Yeah, boba tea is the Taiwanese fad that caught on like a motherfucker. I think "bubble tea" is the even-more-Anglocized version of "boba," since I've only heard it in the last few years. Anywho, boba's been around for 6 or 7 years at least if you go to Chinese-American parts of Los Angeles. There was even a boba place attached to a Texaco station not too far from my house awhile back (though I think both the station and the boba place changed owners). Boba places have had steadily expanding menus from what I've seen, so now you can order super-arcane boba combinations like taro pudding milk tea with tapioca. My favorite drink at "Tapioca Express" (a chain boba place) is a non-boba drink called "Finland Juice." It tastes kind of like a sticky sweet guava with egg and maybe cream. Every time I get it I ask what it is, and no one's been able to tell me yet.

If it's what I think it is (somebody correct me if if trippin'), the fried chicken steak is small, spiced deep-fried pieces of chicken. It's similar to chicken fried steak in that it's greasy, bad for you and pretty tasty. It's dissimilar in that it's chicken, not steak. Man, now I'm hungry.

If anybody's interested, here's the very extensive menu for Quickly, another boba place. Some of this stuff is mysterious to me, too. For example, what is the "vinegar tea"?

Yeah, I first saw those four years ago in the New York suburb I grew up in, when I was home from college for a weekend. Whenver I've tried them, I haven't been enthused, but they're pretty popular.

I go to a Quickly every day. I'll try the vinegar tea on a dare and report back if you want...

IF you want to try the bubble tea and you're near UNC, the Daily Grind sells them (Starfruit and Mango.....gooooooooooood. So's the purple one but I can't remember which flavor that's supposed to be. The red Thai one ain't bad either, but not as sweet.)

When I worked there I spent entirely too many mornings prepping those tapioca "pearls" so I'm very much against eating them or putting them in the drink (we fixed them in a rice cooker). We even tried to let them marinate for hours in a mix of caramel and vanilla syrup. Know what you get? A sweet coating on a rubbery ball of no taste. Bleh!

We have them here in town? Criminy!

Most of the college towns I've been in have bubble tea places, but honestly, this is the first time I've seen a description.

We even have them over here in Cary/Raleigh. Cup A Joe carries the bubble tea, and I occasionally get it in the summer when it's too hot for serious coffee-drinking.

They do look at you funny though if you ask for bubble tea sans the little tapioca balls. I learned to get a smaller straw instead, lest I anger the barista.

My girlfriend and I tried bubble tea once, from a fancy place in Chinatown (NYC). Never again.

I had it at the cafe in a downtown Lost Angeles Japanese spa hotel three years ago, so until now I had assumed this was a *Japanese* fad.

Newsflash: I was in Taipei recently, and there, at least, bubble tea is over. People are really into Starbucks now. Since Taipei is a pretty good candidate for ground zero of the phenomenon, I expect its overness to diffuse out to the rest of the world any day now.