Review: Candy Café, Soho

What is that strange phenomenon when you hear about something for the first time and suddenly it seems to keep crop up everywhere? Well, that has been my experience this week with bubble tea. Until a week ago I had never even heard of this drink when I stumbled across a reference to it online. I did a little bit of research and discovered that it was a drink invented in Taiwan, apparently in the 80s, but now popular throughout South East Asia, the west coast of the USA, and Canada. It's a drink that seems to have countless variations. Some contain actual tea, green, oolong or black, some don't; some have milk or soy milk in, some don't; some have fruit or are purely fruit based, and some don't; etc. etc. But the one thing they have in common is tapioca. What?! I hear all you Brits saying, the disgusting stuff like frog spawn that we used to be force-fed at primary school? Well, no, not exactly. It is possible to get a bubble tea made with the small white pearl tapioca but the more common drink is made with large black tapioca pearls.