San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
FOOD + WINE
Over 100 recipes, including classics like matcha latte
Can’t get boba? Make it. Fun book features more than 100 recipes by Boba Guys.
It feels a little weird reading “The Boba Book” right now. It’s the first major cookbook devoted to boba in the U.S., fittingly written by the founders of San Francisco’s immensely popular Boba Guys chain, Andrew Chau and Bin Chen. But Boba Guys shut down all of its stores just before shelterinplace — making headlines by laying off 400 people at once — and has only recently begun reopening locations with an orderahead model.
For the uninitiated, “boba” refers to both the black, chewy tapioca balls that sink to the bottom of milk tea and the beverage itself. Sometimes it’s called bubble tea. The New York Times once apologized for calling the tapioca balls “blobs,” which Chau and Chen playfully reference in the book. The combination of warm, bouncy boba and sweet, creamy tea is a classic comfort for many Asian Americans.
“Not to overromanticize a simple drink, but boba is an experience — about history, culture, and identity,” the founders write in the book. “And if you look hard enough into that cloudy cup, you’ll probably learn something about Asia, about America, and, we think, about our society’s future.”
Boba tea was invented in Taiwan in the 1980s, migrating through Asia and landing in the U.S. in the ’90s. Many of the earliest local boba shops were franchisees of international chains, which used powdered teas and nondairy creamer. But boba has grown up since then, and a lot of that evolution is credited to Boba Guys, which quickly made a name for itself by serving drinks brewed with highquality tea leaves, organic milk and fresh fruit. The chain grew to 16 locations across the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York.
Part of Boba Guys’ success is its ontrend Millennial brand, which is fitting given it was founded by Millennials and specializes in a product that is itself a Millennial. “The Boba Book” follows suit — it’s fun, irreverent and selfaware. There are clips of digital conversations, appearing as familiar blue and green bubbles on the side of the page, and big photos of attractive hipsters holding branded cups with reusable fat straws. Thoughtful reflections on Asian American identity and cultural appropriation are peppered throughout.
The main attraction, of course, is more than 100 recipes for boba drinks, including Boba Guys’ most famous concoction: the matcha latte with strawberry puree, which is surprisingly achievable to make at home and tastes just as refreshing as when the professionals serve it.
That said, most of the recipes require making multiple components, such as a brewed tea, a sweet syrup and tapioca pearls. Even Boba Guys’ basic tea blend is fairly nerdy: a mix of Assam, Ceylon and Yunnan black tea leaves that took weeks for Chau and Chen to land on in the search for a zippy, powerful yet mellow mix.
That means a lot of somewhat annoying flipping back and forth, and quite a bit of work for one drink. You might be tempted to leave it to the professionals. But the results are worth the effort, particularly if you’re making a few drinks the same afternoon.
All of the Boba Guys classics, including the milk tea and horchata, are in the book, alongside drinks you normally don’t see in American boba shops, such as mango lassi, Vietnamese egg coffee and an intriguing sweet potato latte. You might think these drinks don’t need boba. More to the point: Anything can be boba.
The one thing this book doesn’t offer is a recipe to make boba from scratch. I was surprised by the omis
sion, especially since Boba Guys opened its own boba factory in Hayward, but it’s also understandable: Making boba from tapioca starch is tedious, and even preparing storebought boba takes more than an hour. There are other scratchmade toppings recipes, though, such as grass jelly and egg pudding.
Flipping through the pages, I couldn’t help but think about the future of Boba Guys and the countless immigrantowned boba shops around the Bay Area. It’s hard not to wonder if they’ll make it through the summer — or if they’ll make it until 2021.
At least now we can make great boba drinks at home.