Toffee Milk Tea

Recently checked out a Chinese convenience store near my house that I’ve been meaning to shop at since moving; it makes sense to have a Chinese foods store in this area because so much of the neighborhood is Chinese – but it’s actually quite impressive the VAST variety of things they carry; I’ll have to go back several times I’m sure – there’s enough interesting looking drinks, sweets, baking, frozen foods, etc. to keep me trying new and interesting foods for months.

What really drew my attention was this giant shelf of milk tea! It had so many different kinds of instant milk tea powders, which are cool but perhaps not quite intriguing enough to make me want to blindly pick up a whole tub of instant milk tea. However, there was also a giant row of different flavours of premade milk tea beverages; like getting a bottled tea latte, but more authentically milk tea. There were easily a dozen different options, but I restrained myself and started by picking the two most interesting sounding ones…

So; to drink this you literally just chill it and then it comes with a straw that gets stabbed into a foil top and you have a milk tea ready to go! It’s kinda cool, and I could definitely see myself getting hooked on these are a convenient RTD format – given my love of milk/bubble tea. I was most intrigued by this toffee flavour, and it was actually REALLY impressive! The coolest part, by far, is that it does actually taste like tea! Not necessarily the most impressive/highest quality tea, but there’s a distinct black tea flavour that already puts this quite a step above most milk/bubble tea that you’d be getting from the average shop. The toffee flavour isn’t shabby either; it’s pretty dense and rich – not a “high note” kind of caramel like you’d get from caramel sundae syrup type caramel/toffee but more of that buttery, browned/caramelized sugar type of toffee with an almost treacle-y quality. I liked this a lot and I’d wager I’m not alone in that; of all the flavours at the shop this was the one that looked to be the most purchased/shopped through.

I’d buy this again, for sure.