Bubble tea in Malta has been getting more popular around the world and lately has even been becoming popular in Malta. The main stores selling bubble tea in Malta are GOG Bubble Tea and Tea Fusion. We have a look at both.
What exactly is Bubble Tea? Bubble Tea owes its origins to an Taiwanese recipe with a base of cold tea. Bubble Tea (or Boba Tea) has been around for about 30 years or so, started around the end of the 1980s. Tea, shaved ice and tapioca or boba were all popular individually in East Asia.
So what started out as three separate drinks/desserts have now been combined to form one trendy drink for today’s times. This drink uses a blend of either milk, juices, shaved ice or yoghurt with boba and tapioca bubbles giving the drink its iconic name.
Before we tasted our first bubble tea in Malta about 1 year ago, we were very skeptical about it. Luckily we were very happily surprised and have enjoyed a series of different bubble teas throughout this past year from both GOG Bubble Tea and Tea Fusion.
GOG Bubble Tea can be found in The Strand, in Gzira and was opened in June 2019. You can also order your bubble tea from WOLT. We think they offer the best variety of bubble teas in Malta. You can choose either a milk tea, fruit tea or smoothie.
They also have a specialty menu which we have to admit has our favourites. Our favourites are the Oreo Love Chocolate Smoothie for the chocolate lovers and Cafe Love Coconut Smoothie for the coffee lovers. We have to admit that we would definitely love to see new additions to the specials menu. We do love to try a new drink!
View this post on Instagram
With every GOG Bubble Tea, you can choose boba/tapioca to add. These popping boba make it very enjoyable to drink. You can choose from one of the following: peach, strawberry, lychee, pineapple or mango popping boba, taro tapioca, original magic ball, hantian, brown sugar, jelly, aloe vera, tapioca or pudding.
If you would enjoy the popping effect and a fresh taste, we would definitely recommend going for boba. Although Tapioca tends to be a bit more chewy and they are a bit tougher than the boba. We prefer boba over Tapioca but really, it depends on taste!
The second outlet selling bubble tea in Malta is Tea Fusion. Tea Fusion currently have three outlets, which can be found at The Plaza in Sliema, Is-Suq tal-Belt in Valletta and at Eden Cinemas in St Julians. You can also order from either Bolt Food or WOLT.
We were not too fond of the Strawberry Milk Tea, which in our opinion tasted more like a Strawberry Nesquik drink from our childhoods. We struggled to finish this one. However, two great bubble teas we can suggest from Tea Fusion are the Oreo milk bubble tea with cheese cream on the top, and the Passion Fruit slush smoothie.
Tea Fusion also has ice cream mochi in different flavours available. This Japanese ice cream is essentially a rice cake with an ice cream filling. The rice cake is chewy but sweet. They can be bought from one of the stores or ordered online.
Both GOG Bubble Tea and Tea Fusion are currently the two main outlets selling bubble tea in Malta. Both are not only committed to providing delicious bubble tea but are always very keen on doing their part for the environment.
GOG Bubble Tea has a nice designed cup which can be recycled. Tea Fusion has a refillable cup, which comes in either Regular or Large sizes. If you present your reusable cup to one of the Tea Fusion stores, they will give you a discounted price. We encourage this incentive and keep our reusable cup at home.
Whichever bubble or boba tea you prefer is purely up to individual taste. When it comes to our preference, we always prefer something based on sweet fruits, chocolate or coffee. We are fond of desserts, including drinks! Both stores are great and surely both are looking at a very busy time ahead.
Have you tried bubble tea in Malta? What did you think? We personally prefer smoothie bubble teas over milk teas but we’d love to hear your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below.