Hello friends! I recently discovered a new bubble tea shop in Burnaby and I’m so excited to share it with you all! Tea 18 is located along Kingsway street in the same complex as a Xing Fu Tang and a Coco so there’s lots of bubble tea options to choose from in that single block!
Tea 18 is spacious on the inside with a few tables to sit at as well as two swing chairs for aesthetic appeal. The walls are also covered in cherry blossom(?) trees to give the cafe a peaceful and serene feel. It was as though we were in a different place!
Tea 18 tapioca pearls
What sets Tea 18 apart from the other bubble tea shops in the complex is that they have 8-hour cold brewed tea and housemade tapioca pearls! Since this is one of their specialties, they offer them in a variety of flavours including caramel, original, black sesame, matcha, rose, and brown sugar. Since it’s the summer time, they were featuring their watermelon flavour ones which reminded me of sour watermelon gummies.
Tea 18 menu
Their menu is pretty straight forward with no “powder” flavoured tea items. They have traditional milk tea with fresh milk, fruit teas, cheese foam tea, slushes, high mountain tea (cold brew tea for 8 hours), classic teas and even coffee options! The tapioca here is $1 instead of your typical $0.50 but it’s worth it because they make the pearls from scratch in house.
Since it was our first time here, we decided to try a few new things. I usually opt for milk teas but I felt like trying straight tea instead that day so I could really taste the flavour of the pearls.
Taiwan No. 18 Ruby black tea
The Taiwan No. 18 Ruby black tea is one of the top classic teas. Even though it was a black tea, the flavour wasn’t very bitter. Instead, it was light and refreshing almost like a white tea. We got this with rose pearls. These are one of the sweeter pearls that they offer and they are sooo yummy. I love how you can taste the floral notes in them and you can actually see rose petals in each individual pink pearl too!
Sun moon lake peach oolong tea
I’ve never had cold-brew tea before so we decided to get the Sun moon lake peach oolong tea for our other drink. The tea itself had hints of peach to add sweet notes to the bitter oolong tea. I didn’t think that it tasted stronger or more “complex” than regular brewed teas but it was nice to try a different kind of tea preparation.
Since it was a fruitier tea, we decided to get the matcha pearls with it. You couldn’t taste the matcha flavour as strongly as you did with the rose pearls but they were still super bouncy and chewy. I never really understood the peal of housemade pearls before my visit to Tea 18, but I’m definitely on that train now because it was just sooo good.
Quick bites
- We will be back (yay stamp cards)
- Lots of variety for tapioca pearl flavours
- Fresh quality tea