I’m not much for a fancy beverage that’s not a cocktail (recognizing the legit need for mocktails) and never have been. It’s not that I’ve never been to a Starbucks, but for the most part I make my own coffee, and if I do happen to go to a coffee shop to get my caffeine fix, my order is rarely more complicated than “black, no sugar,” maybe iced if it’s hot out. While I take my children to get bubble tea, I don’t really get or participate in that phenomenon either. With at least 10 places to get bubble tea in Athens, I can recognize that my views are not those of the majority, so I popped into three newish bubble tea places to check them out.
SHAKE TEA (5375 Jefferson Road, 706-395-6270, shaketeausa.com): It is parked in the corner of the Oak Grove shopping center, previously a dead zone for bubble tea. With an expanding population in that part of town, it feels like a bubble tea place is as much a requirement as a nail salon for any new development.
One of Shake Tea’s innovations is that it makes a bubble tea version of Vietnamese phin-filtered coffee, topped with cheese foam (a sort of whipped cream that includes cream cheese, making it richer and saltier than usual) and incorporating coffee boba. Is it essentially a milkshake, even if prepared with 25% of the usual sugar? Yes. (I do like that nearly all bubble tea shops let you customize this.) Is it also pretty tasty? Absolutely.
The shop is fairly large and has board games to encourage you to hang out. Drinks start as low as $5.25, but are mostly above $7 and include refreshers (caffeinated fruit juice/tea blends) as well as smoothies, fruit teas and milk teas. You can also order fried snacks or bubble waffles in flavors like Oreo and matcha. Would I hang out here if I were a teenager who lived in the area? For sure.
HAPPY LEMON (225 N. Newton St., 762-772-2020, happylemonusa.com): Siloed in a concrete canyon at the base of a pair of new apartment buildings on the edge of downtown, Happy Lemon is both designed for foot traffic—there’s almost nowhere to park unless you live in one of the buildings—and not super friendly to it, which is a shame because the folks running it are eager to please. It has the requisite board games and snacks (bubble waffles here, too, made fresh and crisp). The franchise claims to have invented salty cheese foam, and if you get that to dunk your waffle into, I think you’ll be happy.
Given that its name includes lemon and so do many of its drinks, it made sense to try one that features a whole lemon blended into green tea. Unlike a drink that includes only lemon juice, it tastes more like fruit, with a bit of welcome bitterness. Customize your sugar up for a sweet, sweet lemonade or way down for something approaching an adult beverage. Happy Lemon also does yakult (yogurt drinks), fruit teas, milk teas, slushies and smoothies and has seasonal limited-edition drinks. A few drinks come in between $6 and $7, but most are more.
BOBA MANIA (1557 S. Lumpkin St., 706-612-5372, bobamania.com): The most recent to open of these three is tucked into a little house between Shuman Towing and Grindhouse Killer Burgers in Five Points, and is thronged with college-age women, often seemingly fresh off a morning run. Going on foot is a wise idea here, too. There are a few parking spaces in the front and a few more in the back, but it’s not an abundance. This franchise, like Tai Chi downtown, also offers cute stuffed animals and branded water bottles, things that your children will surely beg for. It’s got a smaller menu than the other two here, but the quality is good and the drinks are fresh. There are a few more unusual flavors, like guava, and the Barrow kids down the street love the fact that you can get chunks of Oreo cookie added to your drink. It’s also recently added a selection of breads from the local Enigma Bakery, including a matcha-flavored little wreath and a sweetened cream cheese-stuffed sweet roll, which may encourage lingering. Prices are a little lower than at the other two, with most drinks coming in between $5.50 and $6.50.
Why go to one of these places over another? Like a neighborhood Mexican restaurant, decisions are often shaped by proximity, hence the flourishing of shops, although downtown’s Bubble Cafe still emerges victorious for its incredible variety of teas and snacks. All of them open around noon and close around 8 p.m. (check each location for specific hours and know that if Shake Tea’s google listings says 9 a.m., that is not accurate).
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