#ThirstyThursday: Gong Cha Bandung Bubble Tea Review: Tastes Like Bandung But Pearls Aren’t Tapioca

By
Victor Fong
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For National Day, Gong Cha decided to capitalise on the national flag colours red and white to produce: Bandung Milk Tea.

Introducing:

Celebrating 1 August, the day where the Poland flag gets adopted!

Hold up.

Wrong country. I mean, celebrating Singapore’s National Day with Bandung Milk Tea!

How It Looks

Last year, they used white pearl for this, but of course, you knew this already. But just in case: it’s S$3.50 per cup for a Bandung Milk Tea with Strawberry Pearls.

And of course, we’ve to get this for #ThirstyThursday.

The top part looks like milk to me, and it also tastes like milk to me. Unless I’m high, or my taste buds are somehow failing me at the moment, I don’t understand the milk “tea” part.

The colours of the flag got me thinking though. What if we wanted the top part to be red? Turns out, it’s entirely possible:

So you can dump the white milk on the bottom and red rose syrup on the top. Why they didn’t choose to do that is a shrug.

How It Tastes

But anyway, the next logical step for Bandung is to mix it. Nobody is crazy enough to drink the pink part and white part separately right? (I did for a sip and the red part tastes like diabetes. It’s only separated for the gram guys.)

Here’s an actual true story that happened: Once, when cooking cream of mushroom soup, I wanted to use a little wine for the added flavour. This is of course, common in recipes, though in Singapore most don’t add wine because it’s expensive.

What was added in later is some Chinese Rose Wine, 玫瑰露酒, which isn’t usually used just directly adding to the soup. The entire mushroom soup tasted like Bandung instead of mushroom soup.

Either way, my point is that bandung is a strong flavour on its own. If Teh Peng and Bandung went well together I have a feeling our Kopitiam Aunties and Uncles would have done it before.

There’s really not much revelations to be made from drinking Gong Cha’s Bandung Milk Tea. It feels, looks and tastes like Bandung.

Image: TheMarySue

But here’s a few things. You can’t control the sugar level. It uses milk instead of condensed milk, but it’s still sweet as hell. Strawberry pearls don’t taste like anything. If my taste buds were spoilt, then the addition of the tea didn’t do much for me.

Texture-wise, the pearls aren’t made of tapioca, and instead of chewy has a jelly-like texture. I suspect it’s made with agar and pink food colouring.

It’s cool that Gong Cha has an additional flavour for us to choose from, but there’s nothing much to be excited or patriotic about here.

Unless you really like bandung.

Rating: 3/5

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Victor Fong
Email: [email protected]