Tri-ty Café – Bubble Tea

Restaurant: Tri-ty Café – Bubble Tea

Cuisine: Taiwanese/Chinese/Bubble Tea

Last visited: January 24, 2010
Area: Richmond, BC

Unit 130-8100 Ackroyd Road
Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Drinks: 5 (haven't tried food)

Service: 2

Ambiance: 4

Overall: 4

Additional comments:

• Specializes in bubble tea
• Hot food available
• Mainly Taiwanese food, some Cantonese
• Extensive menu for food and drinks
• Great for snacks/late night
• Brightly lit
• All ages
• Open late
• Great slushy drinks, but undercooked pearls
• Large glasses
• Self order sheet
• Popular for shaved ice, variety for toppings
• Cash only
• Minimum $3.95 per person
• $.50 for additional pearl, small pearl, coconut jelly, lemon jelly, grass jelly
• Lunch/Dinner/Snacks

**Recommendation: Pudding Smoothie with Milk

Tri-Ty Café is a brightly lit bubble tea house that attracts people of all ages, similar to Pearl Castle. It’s comfortable and they have a lot of options for snacks, drinks and meals. People go for lunch or dinner and everything on the menu is served all day including, fried rice, hot pot, noodles and desserts. Only their light meals are like toast, sandwiches and waffles are served at 2:30pm-5:30pm or after 8:30pm. The all day meals are $8.50-$9.50 and they look pretty good although I haven’t tried them. The Taiwanese Style Popcorn Chicken actually looked really good! A lot of people order their shaved ice as well because they have a lot of topping options and you can choose any 5 for $6.50.

I’ve ordered one thing only, but I always keep going back for this one drink! It’s also my recommendation. Overall their other drinks are pretty good too. The only problem I have is that the pearls are a bit hard because they don’t cook them long enough. As a result they’re a bit smaller than they should be and they’re not as chewy. The drink part is great though, and it’s been consistent all the times I have gone. I always get a smoothie and they do a good job here. It’s really thick and they pile them high and some of them include a scoop of ice cream!

On the table:

**Pudding Smoothie with Milk 5.5/6

• $5.25 Additional $0.50 for pearls etc.
• I bet all the smoothies are great here! They taste like milk shakes and it kind of is because they do use ice cream.
• This one tastes like vanilla ice cream, mixed with actual vanilla pudding and some milk tea. It does have a really subtle tea taste to it. It’s pretty sweet, but not overly sweet for me. Let’s put it this way, I discovered it over a year ago and have introduced people to it and this time we went 4/7 of us ordered it!
• Unlike the typical pudding drinks, there are no actual pudding pieces in this drink.
• There's ice cream in the smoothie already but I love how they put another scoop on top. It's just vanilla ice cream and then the pudding flavour comes from the vanilla pudding powder.
• The only thing wrong is the pearls. They’re undercooked and therefore they’re a bit hard and smaller in size. Hence my .5 deduction.

Strawberry Blueberry Slush 5/6

• They use real frozen blueberries and strawberries and they don’t sweeten it too much so it’s very natural.
• Again nice and thick and piled high. I’m pretty sure it’s dairy free and they sweeten it up with some simple sugar syrup. It was sweet and tart from the strawberries.
• Same thing with all their drinks – undercooked pearls.

Mango Peach Smoothie 4/6

• This one isn’t very sweet at all. It’s maybe because I had it after my pudding smoothie which is quite sweet.
• Again it’s made with real frozen fruit. Well at least the peaches are. It’s a great balance of both fruits because I could taste both. However I think the mangos they use could be canned. They garnish it with some mango syrup on top, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was mango syrup or canned mangos.
• Again, I love the scoop of ice cream! If you order “smoothie” it will come with ice cream, but if you order “slush” it might not.
• Undercooked pearls.

Lychee Calpis

• I didn’t try this one, but it’s not as exciting as their slushy series. It looks cool though! The blue thing is actually just a fake ice cube with a light.

Lychee Slush 4.5/6

• This was canned lychee which is expected, but it was good. It was what you expect, not too sweet or anything but just canned lychee with the syrup and some ice blended up. This one was most refreshing.