The Australiafiles: Part 3- Bubble Tea and Cendol

This section is to do with two drinks commonly found in Asia. I'll start with bubble tea.

I've mentioned bubble tea before in a previous post, and that my favourite flavour is taro milk tea (taro's a type of yam that happens to be purple). To recap: bubble tea is traditionally a sweet milky tea with sweet and chewy tapioca balls which looks like bubbles in the drink, but has evolved into any sort of drink with tapioca 'bubbles' in, from fruit juice to milkshakes. You can even get different toppings in addition to tapioca like nata de coco (sweet fermented coconut gel- it's a lot tastier than it sounds) and fruit salad.

Bubble tea is finally enjoying a developing craze here in the UK (late, as usual with a lot of food crazes like sushi, the cupcake and the whoopie pie), but it's old hat in Asia, including in Australia. I found that the two most popular and common bubble tea stalls were Easyway Tea and Chatime (the latter of which has just started up in the UK, yay!)

The first place I tried was Easyway Tea, and of course I had to see what my favourite flavour was like over there.

I chose a taro frappé with the traditional tapioca bubbles

 It was an awesome bubble tea- my issue with a lot of places that do bubble tea in the UK is that they water down the flavour a lot, almost as if they're scared people won't like it (particularly with taro flavour). Thankfully they didn't skimp on the flavour for this one. I liked the texture of the frappé for a change too (an ice-blended drink, sort of like a Starbucks frappuccino).

A few days later I came across a Chatime when I was doing touristy things around Sydney harbour. Perfect timing for an icy drink- it was about 40 degrees out. This time, however, I chose something other than taro. (Gasp!)

Mango milk smoothie with tapioca and nata de coco

Chatime had a little less choice in drinks than Easyway Tea, but only by a little bit (the only thing they didn't offer were frappés, but they had the normal iced-style drinks, smoothies, fruit juices, coffees and milkshakes- and also a huge range of toppings). They were also pretty generous with their toppings and this drink actually served well as lunch by itself! I hope that the UK incarnations of Chatime are as good with choice of flavours and generous toppings.

Now. What is cendol?

This is cendol:

Okay, I'll admit it looks a bit weird. However, the ingredients make it a gorgeous drink-dessert hybrid. The basic makeup of cendol is coconut milk, palm sugar syrup, plenty of shaved ice, and, of course, the cendol itself.

Cendol are the pasta-like green noodles flavoured with pandan, a green and sweetly aromatic plant

I freaking love cendol, and find it hard to come by in the UK- especially since the place I always used to buy it closed down years ago. When I saw it being sold in the food court in Singapore Changi airport during the stopover on the way home, I had to buy it. It might be a strange-looking thing, brown from the palm sugar with green worm-like rice noodles, but of course it was the weirdness that appealed to me in the first place.

Other things are often added to cendol to turn it into a more substantial dessert: sure enough, the one in Sydney Changi came with red beans (one day I'll do an entry on red bean ice drink and ice kacang- other desserts involving beans) and sweet palm seeds. Yes, it seems unusual to a lot of Western tastebuds, but I promise you it works, and it's delicious. I warn you though, it's pretty filling!

Chinatown: Jen Café

I'll say this right away: Jen Café is all about the jiaozi- the Beijing dumplings.

There's usually a lady at the front making fresh jiaozi (the lady under the window with yellow text)

Where?

Situated in Soho right at the beginning of Newport Place, Chinatown, the nearest tube station is Leicester Square. If you're around in Chinatown, look for the pagoda in the square at the end of Gerard Street or Lisle Street and you're there.

It felt a bit weird capturing this pic- usually there are loads of people sitting around it

What?

Like I said, you go here to eat dumplings. Reviews about this place are often pretty mixed when it comes to the service and the other food, but the view on Jen Café's freshly made pork and vegetarian dumplings (and their bubble tea) is unanimously positive. You can pick any other place in Chinatown to have decent noodles, rice and roasted meats, but if you want affordable, fresh and delicious dumplings boiled or fried, you go to Jen Café.

I had vegetarian fried dumplings. Eaten dipped in soy sauce and Chinese vinegar, these were beautifully crispy, pleasingly chewy and full of flavour

Concerning bubble tea, I always, always measure how good a café's bubble tea is by their taro bubble teas- it's my favourite bubble tea flavour. Taro is a type of purple yam, and since I like yams and I love unusually-coloured food, it's pretty much my perfect flavour. It was good but could have had a stronger flavour; I'd say the second-best taro bubble tea I've ever had. The first belongs to a place formerly known as Cafe de Hong Kong, now under the name of Longji, but I'll review that another time. It wasn't at all watery though, which is what I've found with the more disappointing bubble teas I've had.

Bubble tea: a tea, coffee, milky or fruity drink served hot or cold with sweet and chewy tapioca balls (which are the 'bubbles')

The menu isn't huge although it boasts a large range of drinks, but after all this is a café, not a restauraunt.

The service was alright- the ladies got our orders a bit confused but were pleasant enough, contrary to a review I've read where they described the staff as being 'contemptuous'. Not the slickest of systems, but one that works in the end- and certainly worth it for the bubble tea and jiaozi.