Hou cai lei is a bubble tea cafe with a location in Burnaby and another in Richmond. Hou cai lei focuses on milk teas, brewed teas, and fruit teas. What sets them apart from other tea spots are their mini homemade yam and taro balls that they add to their drinks! On this occasion, we went to the Richmond Hou cai lei cafe and were pleasantly surprised at how spacious it was on the inside.
This location is much brighter that the Burnaby one with lots more lighting, yellow accent walls and wooden furniture. At the back of the cafe, they had a shelf of items that you could purchase as well as a tv for entertainment. We think that they serve pastries at this location as well because we saw a pastry case by the front counter.
Jasmine tea with yam balls
Grayson loves his brewed tea so he decided to go with the Jasmine green tea. He usually gets brewed teas here because he says that they have a strong floral tea flavour without being bitter. They didn’t have any taro balls on this visit so we went with the sweet potato balls instead. Unfortunately, the sweet potato balls weren’t as good as the taro version because they were softer and not as chewy.
Caramel milk tea
I usually get either the roasted milk tea or regular milk tea here so I decided to try their caramel milk tea. This one reminded me of a brown sugar milk tea because it had caramel undertones to it. The milk tea here is more creamy and rich than strong in tea flavour. So, if you are a fan of this style of milk tea, this is the place for you. The sweet potato balls were the same as Grayson’s, soft and I would have preferred the taro version.
