Tiny Bubbles!

Fat Straw
Edgehill Village
Corner of Edgehill and Villa
Nashville, TN
615-320-4999

the sign

After the horrible lunch experience downtown at a new eatery, I needed a little pick-me-up, so after work I stopped on in to the Fat Straw on the way home for a little treat. I first heard about Fat Straw this weekend, and I was so thrilled to know that Nashville has its first real Bubble Tea place! Bubble tea is a drink with giant tapioca pearls in it. Bubble tea is sipped with a giant straw and every sip you get a round tapioca ball, the texture of a soft gummy bear, to make a really cool textural drink. I love these things. Bubble tea is all the rage in Los Angeles and Chicago, and in China. When I was in Chicago a couple years ago, in the middle of winter, and I found myself standing in line, outside, everyday for a bubble tea. I was not the only fool standing there freezing, there were plenty of people out there with me waiting for their little treat.

Scot making my bubble tea

When I got to Fat Straw, I already knew what I wanted. I wanted something with mango. I ordered an iced mango green tea bubble tea. How Scot made it was adding mango juice to iced green tea, then putting it in a shaker, and then putting the shaker in the shaking apparatus, and away it shook my drink. He poured my shaken drink over my boba (giant tapioca pearls) and gave me my drink. I sat at the bar, and had a nice chat with Scot to find out more about him and his business, and find out what combinations I could get in bubble tea. I will list some options here: hot or cold. Milk, fruit smoothie or tea based. Flavors like chocolate, peppermint, mango, raspberry, lychee, peach, pineapple, strawberry, blueberry, kiwi, passion fruit, honeydew, coconut, banana, papaya, taro, avocado, almond, red bean, apple, and others. The combinations are endless! Next time I might try an avocado, chocolate hot milk bubble tea with no tea. What do you think?

my bubble tea

I sat at the bar, in this hip place. I love the Soho feel about the place, with cool couch, wi-fi, and lucite bar stools. The bar is an old wood bar that adds to the visual grounding to all the other new wave seating and wall decorations. While I sat there, I told Scot that I really wanted to blog about his business, and I wanted to know more about him. When we chatted while sitting at the bubble tea bar, it reminded me of chatting with a bartender at a bar, but being completely sober and getting a bit hopped up on caffeine from the iced green tea. Scot was so nice, and open about why and how he got to Nashville. He has only been in Nashville for 6 months from L.A. Him and his business partner Monica, also from L.A., quit well paying jobs to come to Nashville and open this business. He had been to Nashville many times to see an old friend of his who moved here, and he kept on thinking there was a need for Bubble Tea. Scot knows about a lot of other Bubble Tea places in Taiwan, L.A., San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, and he really believes that Nashvillians will fall in love with Bubble Tea just like the rest of these places. He said that Nashville has been really great to him, and has welcomed his bubble tea with open arms. That is great, I thought, because I want lots of people to love bubble tea like me, so his business can be here for as long as I am addicted to bubble tea.

OK, so I had a little chat about where the name Bubble Tea come from, because it can made without tea, and what is up with the bubbles? What I have heard was that the word for giant tapioca pearls is BOBA in Chinese, so it was called Boba Tea when Bobas were added to iced tea in China. When this drink finally made it across the pond from China, the phonetics turned Boba to Bubble Tea. But, Scot has offered up another version of how Bubble Tea got its name. He said he knows the guy in Taiwan who invented the Bubble Tea shaker machine, and said the original drink was iced tea with sugar shaken a ton, then poured in a glass with a thick layer of tiny bubbles, thus the name Bubble Tea. Scot said that the tapioca pearls came later. Another explanation was that the tapioca pearls getting sucked up in the straw looks like bubbles, thus the name Bubble Tea. What do you think? Let me know what is the origin of the name Bubble Tea.



technorati tagged with:
Nashville Eats
Fat Straw