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Little Uluh’s rose oolong tea with cheese foam.
Picture: Courtesy of Uluh
I first began to note the traces a few months in the past, backpack-wearing teenagers and other people of their early 20s snaking down sidewalks in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, ready to go to Heytea, small outlets focusing on the frosty, foamy innovation often called cheese tea. Various completely different purveyors supply the fruity layered iced teas — that are certainly topped with a pillow of salted, whipped cream cheese — however Heytea is probably going essentially the most well-known, having first popularized the drink in China earlier than increasing to elsewhere in Asia, Australia, and the U.Ok. The primary New York Heytea opened simply over a yr in the past; there at the moment are 15 within the metropolis, and wait occasions can stretch to an hour, although followers inform me it’s straightforward to order forward of time with Heytea’s app.
I did order in particular person once I stopped into the shop on Bleecker Avenue, the place a TV display within the again displayed manicured tea fields. I acquired a Cloud Crisp Grape, which was like a purple green-tea slushie with a layer of cheese foam on high. There was a Creamsicle-like attraction to the mixture of dairy and medium-sweet fruit, however I didn’t fairly know what to make of a drink that appeared like equal elements bubble tea, Slurpee, and Frappuccino.
“Boba is admittedly simply one in every of many issues which are put into teas in Taiwan,” the place cheese tea additionally originates, says Cathy Erway, a good friend of mine and writer of The Meals of Taiwan. She says the U.S. is just now beginning to meet up with the number of toppings accessible abroad. (Erway’s favourite is loaded with “blubbery chunks of vanilla pudding.”) Esther Tseng, who first wrote in regards to the Stateside arrival of cheese tea a number of years in the past, calls all the chewy, pulpy add-ins and aerated foams “texture research” — and says it’s nice to see a widening appreciation for the vary of flavors.
Heytea, which additionally serves boba, calls its choices “new Asian tea,” which accounts for the gathering of colourful, juice-forward drinks and slushies through which tea is extra a supporting character than a predominant ingredient. The strategy has caught on at a lot of different spots across the metropolis, too. At Little Uluh, the brunch–and–bubble-tea sister spot to the Chinese language restaurant Uluh within the East Village, there may be cheese-foam-topped rose oolong tea, and matcha is layered with strawberry milk earlier than being topped with an “egg” fabricated from whipped cream and mango purée. At Partea, a neon night-market-themed house in Union Sq., I ordered a whipped tiramisu oolong pudding tea and drank it whereas I performed among the arcade video games. I used to be additionally reminded of the difficult-to-categorize “blue coconut” drink on the French Asian bakery Salswee: a mix of pea-flower tea, coconut water, and salted whipped cream that tastes like cereal milk. And though the place is primarily a espresso store, the vegan chilly foams at Dialogue — in flavors like carrot, osmanthus, and black sesame — are served over hojicha and matcha.
I at all times see college students and supply employees crowded into Debutea on Thompson Avenue, which opened in 2017 (and expanded to a full-service teahouse on Smith Avenue in Brooklyn). Co-founder Li Zhao says the cream for the cheese tea is hand-whipped for 40 minutes, and the menu emphasizes contemporary substances, just like the ube I watched an worker peel behind the counter. Along with seasonal specials like genmaicha flavored with pomelo and a papaya frappé, Debutea has been increasing into drinks that don’t embody tea in any respect for youths and different prospects who might not need caffeine. One massive vendor is strawberry milk — evenly sweetened jam and complete milk served in a bottle and accompanied by straw that’s broad sufficient to slurp up all of the fruity pulp.
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