Taro Milk Tea @J's Tea

 

I  first discovered the joy of Pearl Milk Tea in Brunei when doing a crazy walk across town to a market in tropical Borneo jungle heat. Mr K. and I stumbled under an awing for some shade and ended up sucking giant starchy pearls up an over sized straw. It was heaven.

Since then I have obsessed over it and a few months back we discovered J's Tea in Dominion road.
It's a good stop on our weekend Urban hikes and is seriously refreshing.
Although it is so busy that twice we have had to give up on trying to get a seat and get take out.

After a few visits I noticed that quite a few of the customers were drinking a purple milky drink which I was sure was the Taro Milk Tea so next time I ordered the Taro Milk Tea with Pearls and it was divine. Since then Mr K. has had this every time.

Usually once I have discovered something new and yummy I set about finding a recipe and making my own version. I had already acquired the starchy balls that make the pearls months ago when I was concentrating on making my own pearl milk tea so now I have to find out how to make the taro flavour.

A few streets from where we live there is a predominately Pacific Islander neighbourhood where the gardens are planted with taro. Mr. K. has become fascinated with taro now so mentioned to a friend at work that he'd like to grow some in the garden. The friend promptly dug up her garden and provided him with a dozen plants which I sowed in the veggie plot at the weekend.

Not sure whether these will ever make it to the Pearl Milk Tea but with J's within walking distance it won't matter.

Waitangi Day Coffee

With today being a public holiday I was faced with a problem-the public holiday surcharge!
As far as I am concerned there is no price you can put on a good coffee and cake but Mr. K hates it and has started to refuse to go to any place with public holiday surcharges.
So today I was faced with the dilemma of either going to the Hardware cafe our regular haunt in Titrangi which I knew didn't have a surcharge or take a chance on a new place. Mr. K. can be a reluctant cafe dweller at times since he thinks if he does it too often he will turn into a Jafa but holiday's are an exception. Holiday's make cafe going okay in Mr. K's eyes so I took the opportunity of the long weekend to drag Mr. K to Onehunga in search of a new cafe.

The first cafe on my list was closed for the holiday so we headed up Onehunga Mall in search of an alternative. We past a few good options but headed right to the top of the hill to Brick by Brick.

It was serving Allpress coffee which is always a good start and seemed clean and friendly. The cake selection wasn't huge but I had a blueberry muffin and Mr. K. had an almond croissant with our flat whites.
Unfortunately the coffee was awful. Usually Allpress is consistently good but this was too string and burnt. Turns out a bad barista can ruin even an Allpress. The muffin was good but nothing has touched the blueberry muffin from Napier.
Mr. K complained that the croissant had been over blasted in the microwave.
What a shame but it was a cute place, which seemed to have a Japanese twist. There were lovely looking stuffed tofu pockets and home-made Teriyaki sauce for sale. Next time I'll skip the coffee and go for something else I think.