Want boba with that?

Marisa O’Neil

By all accounts, it looks like a normal iced latte in a plastic cup

-- until you see the wide-gauge straw.

Oh yeah, and the little, black, pearl-sized tapioca balls, also

known as “boba,” sitting at the bottom.

“Sometimes people come in and ask about boba, but they don’t get

it,” said Grace Oh, owner of Upper House tea house in Costa Mesa. “I

tell them that it’s tapioca, but then they ask me: ‘What’s tapioca?’”

Originally from Taiwan, boba tea -- also called bubble tea or

pearl tea -- first started catching on in areas with large Asian

populations, such as Irvine and the South Bay of Los Angeles. Upper

House, which opened last year just down the street from Orange Coast

College at Baker Street and Fairview, sells teas, coffees, smoothies

and slushies, all with or without the tapioca boba.

The tapioca starch used to make the boba comes from the cassava

root; it is formed into balls and then boiled for more than an hour.

The boba become soft little gelatinous beads, ready to be sipped

through the fat plastic straw that comes with all boba drinks.

“It tastes different depending on what drink you get it in,” said

regular customer Meghann Chell, an Orange Coast College student, who

was drinking taro-flavored milk tea. “It tastes like candy.”

Upper House sells iced green or black tea with milk or with exotic

flavors such as passion fruit, green apple and litchi. Everything

gets shaken and not stirred in a martini mixer and poured into a

plastic cup. A plastic lid is sealed on by a special machine. The

boba straws have a pointy end to pierce the film.

The shop, which Oh called a “fusion” tea house, also sells a wide

variety of cold and hot teas, old standard Earl Grey and the more

unusual, such as berry tea and popcorn tea, made with green tea,

brown rice and popcorn kernels. They have added sushi rolls and

crepes with fresh fruit to the menu.

Oh said she wants to make Upper House, with its cushy sofas,

contemporary barstools, art on the wall and a sticker-photo machine,

an inviting place where customers come and relax, not just get a

quick drink. Right now, 80% of her business is regular customers, but

as boba catches on, she hopes to steal a little of Starbucks’

thunder.

“I’m trying to get more people familiar with tea,” she said.

“People like coffee, they wake up with their coffee every day, but

tea is healthier.”