Bubble Tea Rankings
I enjoy boba (bubble tea, pearl tea) a lot. I prefer plain teas (in order of typical preference: jasmine green, green, oolong, pu'er, white, black) with tapioca boba (honey or black/brown sugar). When I say cheap, it means anything under $4, while mid-range is $4 to $5.50 and expensive is anything above $5.50 (as of 2024). Here is my ranked list of boba purveyors, through the lens of those preferences.
OROBAE (Irvine, CA)
OROBAE has some incredible tea. They focus on oolongs, but they're not too harsh or earthy. It has all of the flavor without any bitterness. The boba (somehow?) absorbs the tea flavor, so it feels more like an extension of the drink rather than a topping.
The moment the Gyokuro finishes its hallowed journey, you are teleported to 八女市. You can smell the crisp ocean air, marvel at the beatiful mountains decorating the horizon. If other teas play a 128kbps MP3 song, OROBAE conducts a world class orchestra. Hands-down the best tea I've ever had.
- ⭐ Overall rating: 9.3/10
- 📍 Distance from OROBAE: 0 miles!
- 🧋 Favorite drinks: Gyokuro Green Tea, Metal Buddha Oolong, Rising Phoenix Oolong
BoBaPoP (San Diego, CA)
BoBaPoP looks like a normal boba place but has seriously amazing tea.
They use a blender or some kind of high-speed mixing device like OROBAE, I'm not sure what the sweetener exactly is, but the tea is otherworldly. They also have a really nice selection of niche, high quality teas (e.g., Tie Guan Yin, Darling, Alishan, Jin Xuan...). Just a super consistent, high quality place. The boba is always perfectly cooked. No huge lines, no standing outside or gold embossed bags, just really good tea.
(Note: they originally started in the DMV, DC/Maryland/Virginia, but the DMV location is hot garbage! Really sad how they cater to the market by making exclusively sugar slushies and trash tea.)
- ⭐ Overall rating: 9.0/10
- 📍 Distance from OROBAE: 75 miles
- 🧋 Favorite drinks: Osmanthus Oolong, Tie Guan Yin Oolong, Dong Pian Winter Tea
茶工廠 / CHA-KOUJYOU (Osaka, Japan)
Definitely the best "classical" tea I've had. OROBAE uses fancy coffee making machines, which obviously, work very well... but there's something cool about the setup 茶工廠 has. It literally translates to Tea Factory, which I think is a neat name, and pretty accurate for the chemistry lab they have going on.
It took me forever to find this place, because it was in an underground mall, just sitting there on the corner with its little CO2 sensor and single employee. The drinks were made quickly (maybe a minute per drink) and were cheap (around 450 yen, or like $3.50). Tea was amazing, boba was expertly prepared. And they had a little spot to take a picture of your drink.
- ⭐ Overall rating: 8.9/10
- 📍 Distance from OROBAE: 8,000 miles or something
- 🧋 Favorite drinks: Four Seasons Oolong, Jasmine
Wushiland / ooTea (San Diego, CA)
I don't get the chance to go to Wushiland often, but they're very good. They have everything you would expect, a fairly limited menu (which I like), and their base teas are excellent. Their boba is also really high quality. It won't change your life, but yeah, it's good. If I had to complain about something, they're not super quick.
- ⭐ Overall rating: 8.6/10
- 📍 Distance from OROBAE: 70 miles
- 🧋 Favorite drink: Four Seasons Tea
Xing Fu Tang (Flushing, NY)
Xing Fu Tang had a good selection of teas, maybe lacking a bit on classical/traditional teas. But they had an abundance of style. The whole shop feels like a boba performance. For one of the drinks, they blowtorch the top of the milk cap for you (in plain view, of course-- the glass panes reveal all). They prepare their boba in a big wok right by the front door. I got the jasmine with honeycomb, the boba was incredible, the honeycomb was great, the tea was stellar. Although, too expensive (~$6).
- ⭐ Overall rating: 8.38/10
- 📍Distance from OROBAE: 2800 miles
- 🧋Favorite drink: Jasmine Honeycomb
Tiger Sugar (Ellicott City, MD)
Suprisingly flavorful base tea, and nice boba. Especially with less sugar added, it's very good (25% or 50%, since 100% tastes like 150%. They are Tiger Sugar, I suppose). Some quirks though, the boba tastes kind of like raisins or dates, not sure how they prepare it. And they feature a lot of desert drinks (oreo, chocolate) rather than the pure teas I'd be more interested in.
- ⭐Overall rating: 8.30/10
- 📍Distance from OROBAE: 2,600 miles
- 🧋Favorite drink: Golden Oolong Tea
HNTea (Irvine, CA)
One of the only places I've seen sell Pu'er tea. Very yummy, nice and complex flavor. Sweetener was also quite good, but not OROBAE or Tiger Sugar tier.
- Rating: 8.20/10
- Favorite drink: Pu'er tea (I forgot the name)
Sunright (Irvine, CA)
The tea was tasty and high-quality, and there is also a pretty unusual and Americanized selection (eg., teas + citruses, lattes), which I think works well for them. The establishment itself is also unique, they don't take orders in person, it's all automated with a set of kiosks. I'm personally not a fan of that, but it did seem efficient. The cups were remarkably nice, a thicker dithered plastic.
- ⭐ Overall rating: 8.20/10
- 📍Distance from OROBAE: 2.5 miles
- 🧋Favorite drink: Sunright Fruit Tea (four seasons + citruses)
Boba Guys (San Francisco, CA)
I'm a sucker for the jasmine... Boba Guys did it well. And the brown sugar boba was good too.
- Rating: 8.19/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
Bengong's Tea (Ellicott, MD)
Decent tea, sometimes the osmanthus oolong is very good. Consistent boba, good aesthetics, overall good place.
- Rating: 8.19/10
- Favorite drink: Osmanthus oolong
Cha X Ten (Tokyo, Japan)
The only thing rivaling the tea and boba (both of which are flavorful and excellent) is the hole-in-the-wall atmosphere. Best experienced when it's raining, this place seems to be like a mini convenience store in addition to tea shop.
- Rating: 8.19/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
Yipbee Tea House (San Diego, CA)
Strong contender, probably the 'smoothest' tea I've ever had (which I didn't know was possible). Boba was great as well.
- Rating: 8.19/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
Yifang Taiwan Fruit Tea (San Francisco, CA)
Very good green tea.
- Rating: 8.19/10
- Favorite drink: Pouchong Green Tea
Chun Yang Tea (Flushing, NY)
Tasty tea, great boba. Fairly cheap.
- Rating: 8.18/10
- Favorite drink: Mountain Tea
Cha for Tea (Irvine, CA)
Great jasmine tea, very flavorful. Boba isn't anything to write home about, but the tea carries it far.
- Rating: 8.18/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
OMOMO (Irvine, CA)
Not a bad place, but a little too close to Orobae to be competitive. They have a nice shop, good selection (focus on many varieties and combinations of teas). They have nice cups similar to Sunright. Tea was pretty alright, a bit bitter, but high quality.
- Rating: 8.16/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
Bengong's Tea (Baltimore, MD)
A pretty well-rounded and high quality place. It still tasted good after it being the third boba of the day, which is a decent indicator of quality. The tea was flavorful and not bitter, the boba was good, they had a nice plastic dithered cup, and they were quick.
- Rating: 8.14/10
- Favorite drink: Osmanthus Oolong
7 Leaves Cafe (Irvine, CA)
Very similar flavor to Cha for Tea, perhaps a bit inferior. I enjoyed the jasmine a lot. Right next to Sunright though, may be worth just going there.
- Rating: 8.13/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
AtBay (Oslo, Norway)
The fruit tea here had a super unique flavor and the boba was quite good. Their tea selections were on the dessert-y side, but they still had some strong plain teas and it was overall pretty good.
- Rating: 8.13/10
- Favorite drink: Passion fruit hojicha
Teaism (Washington, D.C.)
Got a nice jasmine tea here. This is a cafe style place that sells a lot of different kinds of (good looking) tea. Predictably, the tapioca was okay, but the tea was excellent.
- Rating: 8.12/10
- Favorite drink: Silver Needle Jasmine Tea
Yifang Taiwan Fruit Tea (Tokyo, Japan)
I didn't get the fruit tea, but their normal tea (four seasons oolong) was above average, and the tapioca was excellent, but they only had enough for (n-1) drinks, but I thought she said the only had enough for one... So I picked my top choice to get the tapioca, and that one got none :( Totally my fault though.
- Rating: 8.11/10
- Favorite drink: Four seasons oolong
The Alley (Irvine, CA) and (Tokyo, Japan)
Nice aesthetics and selection, very cohesive theming (deer themed, for some reason). Jasmine tea was good, very similar to the others in this tier bracket. They have a lot of "deerioca" milk teas which seems to be their main selling point, so I might not be getting the full experience.
- Rating: 8.10/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
Redstraw (Irvine, CA)
A good, clean, refreshing iced oolong. Not as complex or flavorful as most oolongs, but it has a nice subtle taste. They also gain points for having a large selection of pure teas.
- Rating: 8.09/10
- Favorite drink: Osmantus oolong
Kung Fu Tea (San Diego, CA)
Kung Fu Tea is a good place. They do their job pretty well. Half the time when you walk in to the shop it feels like a sauna, so that's a plus. Their green tea is what I usually get, and it's pretty consistent and flavorful (moreso than say, Gong Cha's green tea).
Worth noting, once (2023-01-21), I went and ordered a green tea but they gave me something that was clearly not green tea. Maybe they thought I ordered peach grime toilet water? (I ordered another one after that, thinking it was a fluke, and got lemon-flavored sugar water. I suspect they ran out of green tea and just wouldn't admit it? (Then I got another, a black tea, and it tasted like rotten pepsi with added sewage extract. Maybe they (correctly) thought I was a sucker and wanted to see how many times I try.)). In any case, good place, they have a lot of locations too.
- Rating: 8.09/10
- Favorite drink: Green tea, Strawberry lemon green tea
Serenitea (Somewhere in CA)
We happened to be near this shop once, and it kind of feels like a fever dream, but the jasmine tea was incredible. It was before I had much experience with boba though, so I'll assume naivety and downrank it.
- Rating: 8.06/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine Tea
Teado (Ellicott, MD)
Good generalist tea shop. Kind of a better version of ShareTea.
- Rating: 8.05/10
- Favorite drink: Strawberry green tea
Komma Tea (Hanover, MD)
I didn't expect to be impressed by a tucked-away boba shop fighting for your attention in a massive mall. They have some fierce competition, like... Kokee tea? Tutti frutti boba? (lmao)
It was pretty decent. Jasmine and assam black tea were watery, but the roasted oolong was pretty competitive. The boba had a very smooth flavor and decent consistency, not sure what sweetener it was. Maybe just simple sweetener.
- Rating: 7.99/10
- Favorite drink: Roasted oolong
Urban Bubble (San Diego, CA)
They have good tea, but they're mainly focused on desert-style drinks. So there's not much effort put into the plain teas.
- Rating: 7.98/10
- Favorite drink: Dragonfruit green tea ("Dragon Delight")
Pearl Lady (Kyoto, Japan)
- Rating: 7.98/10
Da Boba (San Diego, CA)
Tea is pretty good, da boba is... mid.
- Rating: 7.96/10
Tous Les Jours (Ellicott, MD)
Actually more of a bakery than a boba shop, and one of the few Korean places I've had boba from, they have an excellent matcha. And really good pastries. Boba is not up to the standard specialized shop quality, but the tea pulls its weight.
- Rating: 7.96/10
- Favorite drink: Matcha tea
Quickly (San Francisco, CA)
Decent overall tea, good boba, and the drinks were out... quickly. Kind of a bright-colors-and-fruit-milk tea place, but still had some good options.
- Rating: 7.92
- Favorite drink: Jasmine green tea
Tea Jungle (San Diego, CA)
- Rating: 7.89/10
Boba Tea Cafe (???)
Good jasmine tea. It had the "mushy" boba that a lot of smaller shops do, but the tea was pretty good. And I do not remember where this was... the name is so generic.
- Rating: 7.88/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
Blacksugar Boba (San Francisco, CA)
They gave me jasmine milk tea, just like meet fresh... But it was pretty decent.
- Rating: 7.88/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine milk tea
Meet Fresh (San Diego, CA)
Meet Fresh also sells some food, but it's all tapioca/desert/sugar themed. I got the jasmine tea and they gave me jasmine milk tea :/. It was good though. They also have a webapp that reads off orders in a TTS voice, which is super obnoxious and also inaccurate (I consumed my order and left before the webapp called my number).
- Rating: 7.86/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
CoCo Tea (Tokyo, Japan)
Tea was good, and added little drawings to the cups :)
- Rating: 7.82/10
Arteazean (San Diego, CA)
- Rating: 7.81/10
Happy Lemon (San Diego, CA)
I got the jasmine tea, and I wanted to be impressed, but it was pretty underwhelming in both quality and flavor. Still good, but I think my expectations were too high. Although I went again, and the lemon one was much better.
- Rating: 7.8/10
- Favorite drink: Lemon green tea
Presotea (San Diego, CA)
They use an espresso machine. Neat! Pretty good tea.
- Rating: 7.8/10
Tastea (West Coast)
Seemingly unrelated to the Midwest franchise, this vendor is like a blend between ShareTea and Jamba Juice. More typical slushies, drinks, weird combinations. Decent quality, but my socks stayed on, and I prefer shops on the other side of the quality<-->options spectrum.
- Rating: 7.8/10
- Favorite drink: that one strawberry one
ShareTea (San Diego, CA)
ShareTea has been good to me. They may not have crazy drinks, or be crazy good, but they have an impressive level of consistency.
- Rating: 7.7/10
- Favorite drink: Strawberry green tea
Kokee Tea (Ellicott, MD)
This shop feels like the same flavor as snoice, a new-age focus on aesthetics, specialty drinks, and Brand. The tea and tapioca were both good though. They made the drinks super quick, probably because they only have a few options and all the components prepared.
- Rating: 7.69/10
- Favorite drink: Georgia on My Mind (peach green tea)
Gong Cha (East Coast)
Gong Cha on the east coast, at least the one I tried, is much better than its west coast counterpart-- tea, bubbles, all around. Still not great.
- Rating: 7.68/10
- Favorite drink: Strawberry Green Tea
Teamania (Rockville, MD)
More of a bakery than a boba shop (they actually don't even sell bubble tea, just tea), the jasmine tea I got was interesting. Pretty dark flavor and had an artificial almost plasticy flavor to it at first, but it tasted better as I drank it.
- Rating: 7.68/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
Kyoto Matcha (Ellicott, MD)
The boba cake was really good. But this isn't a desert rankings list. The only tea they had was matcha (as one may have predicted from the name), it had a very deep green color, but it was not all that flavorful. Not bad, but the one from Tous Les Jours was way better. And it gets extra points because you can get other good deserts.
- Rating: 7.67/10
- Favorite drink: Matcha green tea
Taichi (Columbia, MD)
The aesthetics:taste ratio is unfortunately much higher than average for this shop. The tea/cups/presentation is great, but the actual flavor leaves a bit to be desired.
- Rating: 7.65/10
- Favorite drink: Strawberry green tea
Yaya Tea (Flushing, NY)
Tea was aggressively mediocre. However, one thing I liked, is that the base tea does not include any sweetener, and is cheaper. I suppose another way of phrasing that is that sweetener costs extra...
- Rating: 7.63/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
TP Tea (Irvine, CA)
I had high expectations, but the tea was bitter and not super flavorful. I did wait a while before drinking it, so perhaps it would have been better to drink it right after buying it.
- Rating: 7.6/10
- Favorite drink: Tie Guan Yin Tea
Snoice (Spring Valley, CA)
Snoice has some very fancy drinks and they sell boba by the JUG. They get points for that. But, they only have a few options, and they're always just made from concentrate. You can't ask for a less-sweet drink, which you probably will want to, because they are very sugary.
- Rating: 7.5/10
- Favorite drink: Galaxy Far, Far Away (butterfly pea tea and strawberry lemonade)
It's Boba Time (San Diego, CA)
Not bad, but not great. Too sweet, tea tasted average. Similar to snoice but loses out on style. Perhaps their "normal" teas are better.
- Rating: 7.4/10
- Favorite drink: Sunset Tea (butterfly pea tea and green tea, I think, the employee didn't know)
DingTea (San Diego, CA)
I've heard a lot of people give DingTea a lot of praise, but I don't see it. They're alright. Depending on the day, the jasmine is pretty decent.
- Rating: 7.33/10
- Favorite drink: Jasmine tea
Tapioca Heaven (San Diego, CA)
Tapioca Heaven feels like home. This was where I first got boba (thanks Michael). They have a good selection. The tea is honestly not very good, but it is a charming small spot and you're paying for the memories.
- Rating: 7.3/10
- Favorite drink: Strawberry fusion tea
Camellia Rd (San Diego, CA)
I really want to like Camellia Rd, they do everything right... except have good tea.
- Rating: 7.2/10
TeaStation (San Diego, CA)
TeaStation is interesting, they have a ton of wild drinks I've never heard of, and their boba (the actual tapioca balls) is pretty good. But they also have the ugly plastic lids, the ones you don't punch your straw through. More importantly, even though they have a big menu, it's a gamble whether the drink is going to be amazing, OK, or awful. That becomes more of an issue than you might expect given their non-standard selection.
- Rating: 5/10 to 8/10
- Favorite drink: King's Tea
Bubblelicious (Chicago, IL)
Not as bad as I thought it would be, but it seems to miss the mark on a lot of important things. I got jasmine with aloe (the only plain jasmine on the menu), but that was not a winning combo in terms of flavor. The base tea tasted decent, but strawberry and jasmine or complimentary fruit would have been better. And it was too expensive.
- Rating: 7.05/10
- Favorite drink I guess: Jasmine aloe
Tastea (Midwest)
Feels like a worse re-skin of Tapioca Heaven. Gets extra points for being the only boba shop (at the time of writing) in a 200 mile radius.
- Rating: 7.02/10
- Favorite drink: Strawberry tea
Boba Cha (Oslo, Norway)
Super mid tea. Exactly what you would expect. If I was dreaming that I was in a mediocre boba shop, it would taste exactly like what I got here. Overly sweet.
- Rating: 6.83/10
- Favorite drink: N/A
Gong Cha (West Coast)
Gong Cha is where you go when DingTea is closed.
- Rating: 6.8/10
- Favorite drink: Mango Tea
Hamar Asia Mat (Hamar, Norway)
I don't know if it's fair to rate this one, since it's a boba shop inside of an Asian market, in a small town in Norway, but uhh yeah it was mediocre. My language overlap with the shopkeeper was exactly zero but we got by with some good ol' pointing and guessing the meaning Germanic root words. That all amounted to me getting the brown bubble tea, out of brown, purple, green, and blue. Honestly it was okay for what I was expecting. Very sugary.
- Rating: 6.67/10
- Favorite drink: Brown
Tea Monks (Carlsbad, CA)
This was an interesting place, in a mall (like some really good places), but they had this insane cup, the largest size of cup available that I've ever seen. It was like a 7-11 double gulp, size of a small child. I can't imagine drinking that with how sugary the drink was (even when asking for light sweetener).
- Rating: 6.4/10
- Favorite drink: N/A
Taste Tea (East Coast)
I guess the "tasty taste-tea" play on words is common, because this is the third unaffiliated chain called some variation of that. Anyway of those it's also the third best. The tea is super weak. It's hard to taste in milk teas, and tea alone could pass for water from a broken filter. I finished the drink but it didn't bring me any joy.
- Rating: 6.3/10
- Favorite drink: Green tea
Seaside (Irvine, CA)
Definitely not a tea shop, but they sell green thai tea + jasmine bubble tea. It had so much sugar I thought I was going to puke, or have to part ways with my pancreas. Great vibes though.
- Rating: 6.1/10
- Favorite drink: Thai/jasmine tea, I guess
Vivi Bubble Tea (Chicago, IL)
Aesthetically a very interesting place. They did the thing where they give me a smoothie instead of a real drink, but it was still pretty liquidy, and the boba was not bad at all. I went again to a different location, and the fruit tea I got was sickeningly sweet. The whole shop feels like if Lisa Frank and American Girl went through a goth phase and started selling insulin bombs.
- Rating: 5.5/10
- Favorite drink: N/A
DaYung's Tea (San Diego, CA)
I was expecting something amazing when the tea costs 6 dollars... but I was very disappointed. One of the very few times I didn't finish the drink. Ice blended "teas"...
99% the time I have been disappointed with a drink is when I think I'm purchasing a real, liquid beverage, but then they start the crunch machine and give me a freezy-pop strawberry ice salad from hell. Why is it so hard to tell what's an ice-blended drink from the menu? Am I just stupid? Who enjoys those? Yeah, I love pretending like I'm ice fishing for tapioca while FDA-approval-pending Pink 40 seeps into my bloodstream.
- Rating: 3/10
- Favorite drink: Leaving