TeaTap
P. Guevara corner Wilson Street, San Juan
Tel. No. 661-7331
Open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily

New milk tea drinks to try: Grass jelly drinks and Yakult milk tea. Click for more.

(SPOT.ph) Manila’s bubble tea fever is showing no signs of slowing down and TeaTap in San Juan is one spot that takes peddling these popular tea-based drinks a notch higher by serving them in a cozy, stay-here-all-day space. Hip, 50s cafeteria-style tables and chairs are perfect for groups who stay only to finish drinking the last boba in their milk tea, and at the far end of the room is a more secluded area with comfy couch seats lining one wall.

Owned by Anthony So, the entrepreneur behind Kozui Green Tea Café in Quezon City, TeaTap offers tea-based drinks in five different lines: the Fresh Brewed Tea drinks; the Grass Jelly milk teas made with healthy grass jelly juice with a light herbal taste; the popular milk teas, which use non-dairy creamer and milk infused with your preferred tea base; their Fruit teas mix fruit concentrate with your choice of tea base, and the Yakult Series uses milk tea mixed with fruit flavors and the popular Japanese probiotic milky drink, Yakult. TeaTap also prides itself on using a teapresso machine, which is used to create 90 percent of the drinks to ensure that your drink is fresh and made only when you place your order.

The choices at TeaTap may overwhelm, but So says their Osaka Black Milk Tea (P95, tall; P105, grande), a milky and robust-flavored bubble tea that uses their strongest, highly caffeinated Assam Black Tea; and the Formosa Roast Black (P90, tall; P100, grande), a Taiwanese black tea drink with roasted and creamy tones, are big favorites.

As with most bubble tea spots, sweetness levels may be customized and TeaTap’s toppings  include not only egg pudding and pearls, but also grass jelly, red bean, nata de coco, and mint-flavored perilla (basil seeds).

So is already hatching the next steps in his TeaTap plot: the Creativitee corner for kids has a shelf full of cute kitschy items for sale and a board where the younger ones can color the TeaTap mascot will soon be available;  a section where Korean-style frozen yogurt will soon be operational and they will soon serve other  food items beyond the Takoyaki balls, which are currently available on the menu.

Photos by Trixie Zabal