Location:
5014 University Way (the Ave)
Seattle, WA 98105

Hours:
1PM-12AM Daily

Cost:
$3.01 for basic iced tea with tapioca (they didn’t charge me for the penny, though)

Good ol’ Pochi’s is an established business that’s been around for years as far as commerce on the Ave is concerned (hardly any of the businesses make it past a year). In fact, I owe my first brush with bubble tea and my subsequent crazed bubble tea neurosis to Pochi’s.

The first time I had tried bubble tea was when a group of friends and I were hanging out at the Mix, and another friend joined us with an opaque plastic cup full of brightly colored liquid in tow. Curious about this strange concoction (the bubble tea craze was to come a year later), we inquired about what he had. He explained to us that while he was living in Hong Kong for a year, he had encountered this popular drink and used to drink it every day after school. He was quite enthusiastic about bubble teas debut in the U-District and encouraged those brave enough (and stupid enough to swap germs with five other people) to try his drink. I was one of those brave and stupid people- in fact, I was the only one, so I guess my stupid level isn’t so high since I only swapped germs with one other person. The others opted out, claiming they couldn’t stand tapioca and that seeing it the size of marbles was quite distressing. I, having led a sheltered childhood, had never had tapioca and to this day still have not had it in its intended form. Perhaps this contributed to my ability to try the drink unhindered, or perhaps I’m just strange enough that I’ll try about anything food related. Whatever the case, I tried it and was shocked by the sheer size of the tapioca. It’s one thing to see thin outlines of the tea-infused balls through a thick fruity liquid, it’s yet another to actually have one of those things invade your mouth and flee into your stomach byway of the throat without your permission. I remember the drink, on the other hand, having a wonderful combination of tea and sweet flavoring. But even so, I was disturbed by the tapioca flotsam one was meant to suck through with extra wide straws. It wasn’t for another year until- with a different friend- I tried bubble tea again. I knew to expect the silken texture of nuclear lambasted tapioca balls (or can one just say “tapioci”?) and to go easy on the straw as not to accidentally swallow and choke on un-chewed balls.

So, Dear Reader who e-mailed me asking what the hell bubble tea is, does that answer your question? Sorry if it doesn’t, I suppose you’ll have to read this article or this one and perhaps search the internet for some pictures.

Now, as far as the general performance review is concerned, Pochi’s earned mixed results. I tried them much earlier this week, receiving a rather watery sinking-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach saccharine concoction. Having the advantage of purchasing quality tea from them on a number of prior occasions, I decided to grace them with a repeat taste test. The second time I ordered, someone different made my drink and it was much better. The drink I ordered was a lemon iced tea with a jasmine base and it was less on the sweet side, more on the tea side. Unlike Yunnie’s, who makes consistent drinks, it seems that with Pochi’s you’re depending on the luck of the straw with which employee serves you. Both trials found the tapioca to have just the right consistency; the balls were smaller than most, which made them more on the chewy side. I personally enjoy this more than the larger ones that have a deteriorative squish to them.

Not only do they offer tea, but they also offer WiFi, vibrant green walls, a vibrant orange counter, the usual selection of games to be used by customers, and uncluttered windows with lots of daylight- something particularly important in Seattle. Oh, and the staff is really friendly- a refreshing change after the bitchy Gingko Tea lady who tapped her foot and got pissy because I didn’t know they only offer lemon-lime flavoring, not lemon. The general layout is rather oblong, so it would be to your advantage to hang out there with only one other person as seating for large groups is limited. The furniture is uniform black mission-style chairs with small matching tables. It looked rather uncomfortable, and the tables were much too small for a board game with ample room left for your drink and elbows. As far as comfy lounge seating is concerned, it’s limited. I believe there were only two relaxed chairs and a padded window seat in the entire place. My first trial taste found the café to be jammed up the walls with rambunctious Greeks (the college kind, not the cultural kind). The noise levels were incredibly high- without the TVs and Asian pop music turned on- and the place felt like a sweltering tropical jungle. My second trial taste found nary a customer and the temperature levels at a comfortable 65 F. Again, the TVs weren’t on, but the Asian pop was at a low and tolerable level.

Pochi’s, you were a balm that soothed and healed my puss-filled broil. Thank you for guiding me to the light that is bubble tea.

The Rating
Ambience: 8 out of 10
Tapioca Texture: 10 out of 10
Drink Quality: 7 out of 10
Recommendation: Try it out. Pochi’s iced tea has more tea and less sweetener than that of others I’ve had, so if you like your bubble tea sweet it might not be the place for you.

This is an ongoing series of bubble tea reviews in Seattle. The control tea for each review is a basic lemon iced tea with a jasmine base (when available). Clearly, the ideas expressed here are my personal opinions and thus are not the end of your world should you disagree.

And once again, German kept me off the Dean’s List. Two more Germanless quarters to go! They should both fly by quite smoothly. I love the language, but I feel there’s something inherently sinister about being expected to comprehend the logic behind anything when I’m not a logic person. To make things harder, the German department at the UW was lacking in quality. Towards the end, I gave up on getting help from my instructors as they were always impatient with my inability to understand the concepts behind the language. One in particular made me want to slap her and scream. Her hard-to-understand Bulgarian accent didn’t help, as one can imagine. Looking back, I feel like I gave up too early. My final German professor seemed like she actually cared about whether anyone learned or not. Perhaps she would have showed me that the mysterious Germanic logic isn’t that complicated.

I had hoped to review Pochi’s Bubble Tea today, but work led to more work which led to even more work which was in turn followed by hanging out with Peter the sexy beer guzzling mandolin playin’ pimp (if any ladies are lookin’ for a real man, he’s single). After a couple of hours of hanging out with Peter, I returned home to spend many more hours fixing my blog comments. Soon I realized that it was gettin’ pretty late and I should work on completing my summer study abroad application that’s due in a little more than a day. Don’t know why it took me five months to finish that application, nor why it took even longer to fix my comments, but I finally completed both.

It’s times like this that make me wish I kept a to-do list so that I can triumphantly cross both tasks off with a fat black sharpie. I would probably add German to the list and cross the hell out of it until ink spread thickly into the paper grain, tearing through in pungent black blood.

Location:

4343 University Way Northeast (the Ave)

Seattle, Washington 98105

Hours:

Um… where did my notes go?

This was the first time I had stepped into Gingko Tea since the spring of 2001. Given how cluttered the windows became one random day a year or so ago, the shop is clearly under a different management than when I last visited. I’m not really sure on the details of all of that as I never paid much attention to the place after I last visited (bad associations due to no fault of the employees/owners of the shop).

Back in the good ol’ days, Gingko Tea had a clear and easy to read menu and a wonderful ambience. The atmosphere was relaxed and had a large wall full of magazines and books for one to browse at their leisure. Games were neatly stacked near the magazines and books and the caf� layout was inviting and warm. The menu is no longer clear and easy to read and the ambience is but a former shade of what it once was. Granted, bubble tea has been added to their menu, their magazines and games are still present, and they now offer free WiFi, but the overall tone of the place has shifted. I believe this was mostly due to the bad vibes that having cluttered café windows induce (never clutter your windows, café owners!) and the overall bitchiness of the woman I ordered from. I also couldn’t help but notice the noise levels were incredibly high. Part of this is due to the fact that the café is solely counter-based and thus the noise of bubble tea preparation invades the general seating, but the majority of blame can be pointed at poor acoustics. It seemed impossible for anyone sitting next to each other to hear one another, so they had to raise their voices rather high.

To get this review series off to a rough start, my control tea (basic lemon iced tea) was not available. Instead, I opted for the only relative in the lemon flavor species they had available and ordered a lemon-lime iced tea. Once I had my drink in hand, I gratefully exited into the bustling (but less irritating) world of the Ave and took my first savoring sip. And…

It had to have been the most disgusting bubble tea (much less food product) I have ever had! The tapioca was cooked too fast so that it had a molted rock-hard and biodegraded texture that reminded me of things one would never want in their mouth. I could have forgiven the woman behind the counter if only the tapioca was disgusting, but the actual tea was far worse. The taste was so saccharine and sharp that I’m convinced it was straight-up artificial fruit flavoring without tea- it certainly left that sinking-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach feel that a cup of pure saccharine syrup would. Of course, my stomach was not the only part of my body adversely affected; the back of my tongue and throat were plagued by the sharp sting of nastiness until I was able to cleanse my palate with a good dousing of two full glasses of water and Listerine.

Gingko Tea, you were a puss-filled broil in my side. Shame on you for violating my love for bubble tea.

The Rating:

Ambience: 7 out of 10

Tapioca Texture: 0 out of 10

Drink Quality: 5 out of 10 (as cat piss would have been worse)

Recommendation: Flee!

This is an ongoing series of bubble tea reviews in Seattle. The control tea for each review is a basic lemon iced tea with a jasmine base (when available). Clearly, the ideas expressed here are my personal opinions and thus are not the end of your world should you disagree.

Instead of traveling somewhere new and exciting and dancing around in a bikini this spring break, I’m staying in Seattle and working. Oh, and the boyfriend left to visit his folks (and dentist) and it looks as if all of my friends are traveling around Europe or working. But who needs that dumb MTV Spring Break beach party crap anyway? I certainly don’t when I’m so fortunate to have a myriad of bubble tea places to fill the void!

So why bubble tea of all the things to obsess over in Seattle? Because the moment I first discovered the wonders of Bubble Tea, I quickly dubbed it my “liquid sunshine”. There’s nothing more soothing on a cold, rainy, depressing day in Seattle than one of those perky bubble tea cups and their vibrant colored straws- half the fun is choosing which colored straw looks best with your tea. Also, I’m quite addicted to the lemon with the fragrant jasmine tea base flavor that the best of the best offer. And of course, the flexibility of drink types is quite handy; if it’s too cold outside for you, then get a hot tea. If it’s too hot outside, then get the iced tea or milkshake or smoothie. There’s also something quite satisfying and soothing about chewing those tapioca balls- the number one turnoff for most people who try bubble tea for the first time (me included). It seems that no matter how high the stress level is when I walk into Yunnie’s (my favorite place of all) the stress melts entirely away after a couple of chews on those tasty tapioca balls of strangeness.

So, this week is my official Bubble Tea Break! Are all five of my readers out there ready to have a rockin’ good time? Yeah? Well let’s go party with the BT! Woohoo!

Last night, my sleep was plagued with a continuous chorus of screaming girls. The perspective of time is next to impossible to gauge while sleeping, but it seemed like every half an hour or so the chorus would shriek, an image of non-descript girls clustered together and holding their faces in the fashion of “Banging in the Nails”, which I have subconsciously attributed to these neighbors, started ringing through my head. After a couple of “I’m bang bang bang bang banging in the nails,” I found myself overtaken with an inexplicable urge to fiddle with their cross and turn it upside down. At about the moment my fingers started to twitch uncontrollably with the desire of such an un-neighborly deed, The Elephant opened the door.

She peered from behind the door, not moving past the threshold of her home to talk with me. I tried as politely as possible to explain that the noise her daughter and her friends made was rather loud last night and this morning.

“Oh, well we had a sleep-over,” she explained.

“Yes, I could tell. I’m just letting you know that we could hear them screaming all night long and I have to work today. I’m really tired and cranky because of it.”

“Girls. Girls, you need to hear this. This lady lives downstairs and could hear the noise you made last night,” she said, turning to her oldest daughter and her friends. All I could see was the back of the oldest daughter who was lounging on the couch. The girl turned slightly to look at me with a dulled look and then turned back to the TV.

“Hmm� Well, I should be going to work now,” I told The Elephant.

Clearly distressed, she repeatedly opened and closed her mouth, stepped onto the porch and then jumped back to the other side of the door. It looked like she wanted to say something, so I stopped and waited. She fumbled with her words for a moment and then muttered something awkward that I couldn’t hear. I started to turn again, but she stepped back onto the porch, jumping immediately back to the other side of the door. I stopped again, waiting for her to say something, at which point she fumbled with her words for a moment and then muttered something I couldn’t make out. I decided that my presence troubled her and that this hopping from the porch back to the protective barrier of her apartments threshold was something that would continue unless I left. So, I said my goodbyes and told her that the noise wasn’t a huge deal but that I wanted them to know we could hear it. I stole one last glance at the oldest daughter who continued to stare ahead at the TV. As my footsteps reverberated off the metal porch steps, I started to sing “I eat scream-ing little gir-ls.” I doubt they heard me, but perhaps I should swing by their apartment to see if there’s another cross hanging on their door to ward against me.

Happy St. Patty�s Day!

Time to get me 1/8th of an Irish arse to a local pub and commence in the festivities.

Lesson of the day: never eat cheddar cheese immediately after brushing your teeth- it’s worse than orange juice mingled with that fake minty fresh flavor. In fact, the toothpaste has an inexplicable ability to make the cheese taste like plastic (or maybe the taste is closer to veggie dogs). I never realized it before, but the texture of cheese has an uncanny resemblance to soft plastic.

Of course, toothpaste isn’t the only one at fault in this stalemate of flavors. Have you ever noticed how cheddar has the ability to make even the freshest of breath go instantly sour? The second you pop a piece of cheese in your mouth, you are cursed with breath that smells like you�ve never seen the jolly white tooth man that raps in front of impressionable elementary school children and hands out neon colored toothbrushes with glow in the dark stars.

Alas, how can such a wonderful thing as cheese have such adverse effects?

On their website, iBill.com claims that they are the “leader in e-transactions”. So then, let me give you one good reason not to buy anything from a merchant that uses iBill: their phone number is disconnected.

I discovered this when I tried to call the phone number on my credit card statement (the same one on their website) when I wanted to inquire about the mysterious continuous charges I’ve been receiving from a transaction I have never authorized (gradesaver.com- an apparent report paper cheat site). Luckily, the charge was only five odd dollars every month, but it�s still a mild irritation that I have had to cancel my credit card for the second time in a little over a year (the first cancellation was because my purse was taken from me at gun-point in the University District). I suppose this also means that it will be the second time in a little over a year that I have to file a fraud protection report with all three credit companies.

Oh well, the plus side of filing fraud protection reports is that I won’t be getting credit card advertisements for another year. I should also add that this is perfect timing as I received my first credit card ad since I was robbed just yesterday.

When I signed up for the Seattle P-Patch program a year ago, I thought the most appealing part of having a garden would be planting whatever vegetables I chose and watching them grow into plump, delectable produce for my consuming pleasure. Never did I imagine what joy I would derive from ripping up grass and other weeds. But needless to say, this is the best part of my garden. Screw the easy way of weeding, which consists of “Roto-tilling” the entire plot with an unwieldy machine from the pits of garden shed hell and then leaving the unearthed weeds to dry in the sun. No, this stressed college student prefers to plunk her ass down in the dirt and gleefully rip chunks of grass by the handfuls. And as I found out today, my dog apparently enjoys sitting next to me in the sun while airborne grains of dirt fleck her white fur.

So this is what part of my day was like. After months of having neglected my plot due to the dismal Seattle weather, daily demands of school work, and absolute laziness, I finally hauled myself, my dog, and my gardening gear up the road to my garden plot. The abandoned plot wasn’t completely alone as there were others here and there overtaken by grass, but mine was immediately identifiable by the twelve massive broccoli plants sporting bright yellow blooms. Overgrown broccoli is not a new sight to me, so I hunkered down into the dirt and settled in for a couple of hours work of weeding. And there I sat, happily ripping mounds of grass from the rich, soggy soil while the pleasant “spring” sun kept my back warm.

A savage soundtrack of dog fights and dog owners who believe in negotiating with their pets played over my blissful weed ripping. After an entire spring and summer of listening to the chaotic chorus of the dog run near my garden plot, I’ve learned to ignore most of the yips, yaps, howls and screams of dogs and their owners. However, my ears couldn’t block out one dog fight in particular. Vicious snarls from two large dogs echoed across the dog run, through the parking lot and over to my garden plot. The snarls continued to echo. And they continued some more. Finally, the voice of one of the owner’s could be heard over the violent dogs; “Penny! Now, Penny, you know that’s not good. Stop fighting with that other dog. Penny! Penny, if you don’t stop fighting with that other dog I swear I’m going to spray you with this hose here. Penny, don’t make me…”

I always thought it was horrible how some parents try to negotiate with their misbehaving children lest the child throws a temper tantrum and cries in public, but the ridiculousness of negotiating with a dog just goes to emphasize how ineffective this method is for children (who, hopefully, are much smarter than dogs).

The fight eventually ended with both owners dragging their dogs across the shit-encrusted dirt in opposite directions, both heading for their cars and hopefully out of the park and out of my life forever. Soon, Penny and her new friend left me alone with the mournful howl of a basset hound and a few abrasive yips of joy. Once again, peace enfolded my corner of the park as I adjusted my loose-fitting jeans lest the crack of my white moon should offend anyone wandering the gently curving woodchip pathways of the P-Patch.

Soon enough, a mother and her daughter appeared- no doubt church goers who decided to spend the wonderfully sunny afternoon wandering the park and playing at the playground. “Alison! Al-ee-son! Walking through gardens that don’t belong to you isn’t nice- you walk on the pathway.” I peered through my weeds and watched pensively as Alison continued to trample through gardens. “Alison, come over here! Look at this bug! Alison!” the mother cried frantically in a vain attempt at enticing the kid to step on the proper pathway. But Alison had no interest in a bug and so ran through a couple of more garden plots. She stopped at a plot across from mine a started stomping on my neighbor’s onions and lettuce. “Alison! Alison! Look at the bug I found over here!” the mother cried, running after her child. When she reached the scene of the crime, she yanked the child through some more onions and onto the woodchips. Then, she stared right at me and asked, “Do you have a problem?”

“Funny you should ask,” I replied, “I do.”

The mother glared icily at me, and I could tell she knew what I was thinking. I left it at that and went back to pulling my weeds and showering my dog with dirt, trying not to listen to the mother mutter about “how rude people are these days” as she dragged The Abominable Onion Stomper towards the playground.

Hey, Homie Ho

See what kind of trouble I get into when procrastinating? I tell you, it’s bad when I have too much homework to do.