This tiny upscale shop fits just seven people and is best known for its organic beauty oolong milk tea. Jin uses only organic tea leaves from certified farms in Taiwan that practice responsible farming practices. The shop serves oolong cold brew tea, organic specialty teas, and organic milk tea with toppings like herbal jelly, brown sugar pearls, and tofu pudding. Jin’s boba is kept warm and soaked in brown sugar, which gives drinks a caramel-like taste.

This shop’s signature bird’s nest cheese cream osmanthus oolong tea is brewed using premium tea leaves imported from China and topped with flakes of edible gold leaf. The biggest drink is the fresh fruit tea, which is filled to the brim with fresh fruit and requires its own special cup. A large drink at VI Tea can set one back upwards of $10.

Half & Half Good Old Time is a part of the Half & Half chain, but is run like an old-school Taiwanese cafe. The drinks, which contain crushed ice and honey boba, are not fancy but rather nostalgic and good. Drinks including toppings and boba are usually under $5.

Ube lovers will love Moo Tea. Moo Tea’s speciality is its purple yam fresh milk with boba. The drink is made with real purple yam blended into a creamy, starchy concoction. The drink has a thick consistency. The texture is similar to a smoothie so don’t forget to mix before drinking. The purple yam drink can be enjoyed by itself or with a cheese foam, pudding, and/or boba topping. Other specialties include the peach tea with yakult foam made with canned fruit bits and the dalgona coffee milk tea.

Originally from Taichung in Taiwan, the birthplace of boba, Chicha San Chen is the first US branch of the shop. Every drink is freshly brewed to order with a special “Teapresso” machine. The shop only takes online orders. Expect to wait anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes for drinks. Drinks are categorized by mousse, cream, fresh milk, condensed milk, latte, honey, fruit sweeteners (mango, passionfruit), or pure tea. 

Some of the most popular drinks are the dong ding oolong tea with mousse and boba, the cassia black tea with mousse and grass jelly, the high mountain pouchong tea, and the osmanthus oolong with mango. The focus at Chicha San Chen is the tea, but it also has many popular toppings like Konjac jelly, grass jelly, and cheese foam. The boba is soft, warm, and chewy. Also, they use milk from Taiwan, which is creamier than American milk.

Taiwan’s OneZo is known as the world’s first boba tea franchise to make its boba in-house. Every shop makes its honey, caramel, black sesame, and taro boba in small batches multiple times a day. Drinks in the taro series are made with a blend of taro root, purple yam, and milk, while the tiger series uses brown sugar as the main ingredient.

Tea Brick’s signature drinks are its fruit teas that contain freshly chopped up fruit pieces in each cup. The tea is strong unlike other tea places that use artificial flavors to cover up lower quality tea. One of the most popular drinks is the Christine, a strawberry, mango, and passion fruit green tea with chopped up mango and strawberry fruit. The Yummee Peachee Lychee is an iced tea infused with peach and lychee flavor and paired with lychee jelly, peach, and lychee bits. Tea Brick is also known for their ever changing seasonal reusable cups that feature cute animal drawings done by a local artist. The cups are a popular collectable item.

Shake 17 times. Seventeen is the magic number that Sunright claims patrons should shake its drinks for the perfect blend. Sunright has some of the most unique drinks in the SGV. The shop imports its ingredients from Taiwan with the exception of the matcha powder from Japan. The signature Sunright Fruit Tea is made using high-quality oolong tea that is mixed with fresh-squeezed orange juice, passionfruit, and orange and lemon slices. The milk tea is sweetened with house-made brown sugar, just like in Taiwan. The slightly larger than average boba is cooked for 90 minutes in brown sugar to ensure that the boba fully absorbs the flavor.

Every month or so Sunright comes out with new exclusive seasonal flavors that are only available for a limited time. The seasonal grapefruit yakult is a fan favorite with its citrusy blend of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and yakult yogurt served with grapefruit slices. Another addition, Summer Frostie, is a smoothie made with passionfruit and pineapple jam from Taiwan served with cheese foam and jasmine tea jelly.

Taiwanese-based Yifang has stores all over the world and is known for using organic sugar, fresh fruits, and tea leaves from Taiwan. The shop’s signature drink is the brown sugar pearl latte, a milky and creamy drink with warm brown sugar boba on the bottom and a brown sugar swirl on top. Yifang’s fruit tea is made with Taiwanese golden pineapple jam, which gives the tea tartness. Yifang’s drinks tend to be on the sweeter side, so make sure to adjust sweetness levels accordingly. 

Tiger Sugar’s signature drink, the brown sugar boba milk with cream mousse, has just three ingredients — fresh milk, brown sugar syrup, and tapioca balls. The popular drink is known for its “tiger stripes” of sugar syrup that run down the cup. Expect a line during most hours of the day.