Meiwei

Meiwei added new summer flavours to their bubble tea menu, so looks like I’m not quite done tasting through their menu yet. I was excited by the idea of a kiwi bubble tea but my God was this sweet! It was kind of like drinking a kiwi simple syrup – had all the notes I was hoping for in terms of fresh tangy goodness but was much, much too cloying to really be all that enjoyable.

I have officially tried every bubble/milk tea on the Meiwei menu!

This was not the worst, but it was definitely low on the list – so it was a little sad that it was what I ended this menu exploration on. The colour of it was gorgeous though; like a deep caramelized brown from something like a Thai Iced Milk Tea. It tasted like sad burnt black tea with far too weak mango, though. Not the creamy “mango lassi” flavour that this profile has the potential for…

Hard to believe, but I’m still working my way through Meiwei’s bubble tea menu. I think I’m down to only like three I haven’t tried though! Meiwei, if you’ve missed one of my other tasting notes on this, is my favourite Montreal dumpling restaurant – FYI.

This is one of the non-milk based bubble teas on the menu, which makes sense to me. I don’t know if I would be down for a milky passionfruit bubble tea based on my experience with their other flavours – seems like that would be weird. I enjoyed this one, but I was definitely taken aback by it because it was SIGNIFICANTLY sweeter than any other bubble tea I’ve ever had from the restaurant and I couldn’t figure out why. However, it just dawned on my that this is labelled as the “most popular” tea on their menu and it might be from all the stereotypical “basic white girls” who are used to the sweet passionfruit tea monstrosity on the Starbucks menu – so maybe this is more sweetened to better match up with their taste? Just a guess, though. If you dialed back the sweetness to about half of where it is now, though, this would be excellent. Very bright and juicy, with a tang and acidity to it reflective of fresh passionfruit.

Not a favourite – but not the worst I’ve tried either.

Ordered dumplings a few nights ago and had this with my order – I chose to have it with fruit jellies instead of tapioca pearls but it would probably taste good either either. This is a non-milk based bubble tea, and I actually liked it a lot. I was worried because I didn’t know if the green tea would be stronger than the honey but this was very thick and honey dominant. Obviously quite sweet because of that and if you were wanting a green tea flavour I think you’d be largely disappointed – but for me that intense flavour of honey and honeycomb was delish!

It’s free delivery on Uber Eats right now for local businesses, and I haven’t been bringing lunch to work most days because I’m working weird hours currently and don’t really know definitively if I’ll be working long enough days to warrant a packed lunch, so that means I’m eating LOTS of peanut butter dumplings right now…

Also plenty of milk/bubble tea! Meiwei finally has tapioca pearls back in stock, so I’m taking the opportunity to try some of their milk tea flavours that I’ve been waiting on because I didn’t think they would compliment lychee jelly – like taro.

This was a really nice taro flavour; the tea was a sort of brown-y purple in a way that actually looked like it had real taro in it over the fake sort of a creamy purple colour that a lot of “taro flavoured” milk teas have. It tasted excellent, sweet and creamy with that distinct starchy type of taro flavour. Also had a note that was in the vain of cocoa without really being cocoa!? I just know it’s for sure one of the better taro bubble teas I’ve ever had…

I ordered dumplings with a coworker yesterday over lunch, and I got this with my order. Thus far all of the milk teas I’ve had from Meiwei have been varying shades of brown but this one was almost pepto pink! I was very taken aback…

It came with a lychee fruit jelly, and I normally would have loved that type of jelly but I feel like it was doing weird things with this bubble tea. The strawberry element was so good; like that strawberries and cream type of flavour you might get from something like the Nesquik instant strawberry syrup for milk. Very sweet/sugary but so good and nostalgic. However, it finished really soapy and floral in the mouth and I’m almost positive those flavour notes were coming from the lychee jelly that was mixed in.

It was like a rollercoaster – start of the sip is great and then a deep plunge down as it finished rough…

From last week – I typically try to order a different bubble tea from the menu each time I make an order with Meiwei, but I guess I had forgotten trying this one already because I’ve clearly already entered it into the database and reviewed it…

Anyway, it was nice and it complimented well with the Peanut Butter dumplings that I was eating but it was a little thin tasting and note as richly coconut (not necessarily sweeter though) and I was wanted.

From last week – I ordered in dumplings for lunch with a coworker, and I decided to pick up a milk tea to go with them. I picked coconut because I expected it to be really creamy and smooth. It definitely was pretty creamy and rich, but didn’t actually taste like coconut!? More just a super creamy version of a black milk tea. Also, the restaurant was out of tapioca pearls and decided to substitute in lychee jelly – which just didn’t taste great with the rest of the drink…

So, this was a little bit of a miss in terms of execution of the intended flavour – but it still tasted alright overall. I think I just need to remember, in the future, that I just prefer the non milk based bubble teas from Mei Wei.

A bubble tea that I had during the week – the kind prepared without milk, and with lots of black tapioca pearls instead of the fruit jellies that I normally order from this place. It was really quite good; maybe the best I’ve had from them thus far!? I could taste the black tea, although it was nothing fancy, and with the lemon/kumquat combo it very much had the feel of typical Southern style lemon iced tea, but with more tang and a bit of a tropical undertone/vibe.

Yum!

Ordered dumplings again earlier in the week, because dumplings are amazing. Of course I got my standard bubble tea with my dumplings, and I chose honeydew because I thought it would be a nice sweet and Spring-ish flavour. I thought this was actually really gross though; one of the worst bubble teas I’ve ever had! The black tea was WAY strong than the honeydew and it tasted very bitter with a sort of harsh, burnt sugar note. The honeydew tasted essentially like someone had poured a shot of honeydew syrup in a very, very poorly steeped cup of black tea. The whole thing had an undertone of coffee, which was a very unwelcome flavour note.

Certainly wont be ordering Honeydew from this shop again…

Ordered dumplings for lunch at work earlier in the week, and nabbed a bubble tea from the shop as well since I really enjoyed the Green Apple flavour from this shop that I had tried previously. This time the banana, unlike the green apple, was a milk tea and not one of the kinds that is a little more “juice” like. It tasted pretty good, but definitely had that intense and borderline sickly sweet artificial banana profile that certainly is NOT for everyone. Also, it tasted a little bit burnt? Probably the black tea; it wasn’t terrible but had that feel of caramelized sugar that has been pushed for just a touch too long and now is somewhere in between caramelized sugar and straight up burnt sugar. It also came with fruit jellies instead of tapioca, which is totally fine – but the jellies were lychee flavoured and I just sort of felt like the lychee didn’t compliment the banana.

Now that I’ve gone through Meiwei’s full menu of bubble tea options I’ve been able to revisit some of the flavours I really liked – this was the first one I ever tried from the restaurant, like two years ago, and I still think it’s probably the best one! Very refreshing and juicy green apple notes with lychee fruit jellies. I would have never thought to pair green apple and lychee but it works so well and it feels like the essence of Spring bottled up and put in a mug.

One of the cool things about living in a huge city like Montreal is the rapid expansion of restaurants/cafe/bubble tea shops/etc that I have access to! I really, really want to check out a ton of the bubble tea places but I think much of that exploration will have to wait until Spring/Summer and warmer weather. However, there are a couple places on Uber Eats and so I’ve been trying some of them out – including this company, which serves dumplings and bubble tea.

This is one of those bubble teas that’s made without milk; and instead of tapioca pearls it had little lychee fruit jellies in the bottom. It was amazing though; the right mixture of black tea notes, distinctly green apple notes, and this sort of refreshing “juice” like quality. Plus, the sweet, juicy, and floral lychee was a nice compliment to the more tart and crisp green apple flavour. I don’t know that I’ve ever had an apple flavoured bubble tea before, and honestly part of me expected it to be really plain and boring. This was super well done though, and I greatly enjoyed it!