Drinking Cheese Tea In Taipei
Where to find The Unique Drink in Taiwan's capital City
Updated: December 16, 2018
What is cheese tea? While not as popular as bubble tea (yet!), Taiwan’s cheese tea trend is catching on around the world. Being fans of tea and cheese, we could not pass up trying this funky drink in Taipei. Check out our guide below to discover where to find Some Of THe Best cheese tea in Taipei, Taiwan.
Now, before your wrinkle your nose and shed a tear for the sanctity of tea, consider what magic cheese adds to the culinary world! Without it, nachos would just be old tortilla chips, and the word “curd” wouldn’t elicit delicious, deep fried imagery in our minds. For most of us who delve into the delights of dairy, put cheese on anything and it changes the ordinary to the extraordinary! So what exactly is cheese tea? Surely not just a slice of parmesan on top of your cuppa English breakfast?! The cheese foam gracing the peaks of tea cups, a trend created in Taiwan, is a cream cheese based concoction. While each shop does it differently, the cheese teas we tasted in Taipei shared a nicely balanced sweet and salty profile. Think cheese as in cheesecake (as opposed to limburger!); a sweet and savory fluffy mascarpone like foam. Sounding better, right?! The now very popular bubble tea also hails from Taiwan. Hey, can we all just take a moment to remember when boba tea shops started popping up left and right? Seeing those chewy pearls whir up straws three times the normal size surely freaked out some of us, and yet the bubble tea love is rampant across the globe! Cheese tea originated in Taiwan some years ago but recently has become immensely popular in nearby China. Stealing the hearts of Instagrammers, photos of the fluffy topped tea has encouraged the opening of cheese tea shops worldwide. So, immense kudos to the genius in Taiwan who decided to whip up some salty goodness to compliment their tea. We were excited to try the drink in its motherland, but had a difficult time finding cheese tea in Taipei at first. We will provide some information to help you find this yummy treat in Taiwan and start getting cheesy!
Determined to try cheese tea we initially had a difficult time finding it. That is until we discovered that virtually every tea shop calls the unique topping something different! So before you walk 40 minutes to a spot that you read has cheese tea (speaking from experience), check the local shops. It’s likely that any tea shop nearby has a variation of cheese tea. The topping has a range of titles; from the very obvious “cheese foam” to just plain old “cream”. Typically at most places, if you point to the menu and ask “cheese?”, they will be able to verify if it is the cheese foam or not. Once equipped with this fact, you realize that indeed virtually every tea shop in Taipei has cheese tea! At many places, the topping can be added to any tea featured on the menu for an additional price. Feel free to explore all the salty foamy goodness wherever you are based at in the city. We stayed in the Zhongzheng district and found these locations to have great cheese tea:
Lattea
With multiple locations in Taipei, this chain serves up a delectably salty cheese “cream” topped tea. Prepare to make some noise as your straw will try to suck up every last drop of foam in the cup! We found that Lattea’s foam was the best for creating some sweet and very photogenic mustaches.
Fruity
This shop was home to our favorite cheese tea of the trip! The taiwanese mountain tea, a variety of oolong grown high in the mountains of Taiwan, has a subtle, flowery taste that beautifully pairs with the thick cheese mousse. This tea remains to this day (many, many cups later) our favorite cheese tea we have tried. Fruity had many other options of cheese tea, including an earl grey and a deliciously strong cup of matcha for those who are looking for a real burst of flavor. This tea shop is hard to find by it’s English name, so please consult our map, at the bottom of this article, to see it’s location in Taipei.
YEBO Home
Looking for cheese tea outside of Zhongzheng? Virtually every tea shop in town offers some form of cheese tea. We discovered Yobo tea shop on our expedition to check out the Shilin Night Market. What’s interesting about Yebo’s cheese tea is they offer a specialty tea in which they use a blowtorch to brûlée sugar on top of it! Once you swirl it all together, pieces of crunchy sugar bits make an extra sweet treat as you sip up the savory cheese foam. Check out pictures of our matcha bubble tea with caramelized cheese foam below. Absolutely delicious!
How Much Does It Cost?
Like all trendy things, cheese tea comes with a bit of a price tag. At most places, a cup ranged from 60 NT to 150 NT (around $2 to $5, as of November 2018). Not too expensive, but more pricey than more traditional tea options.
Cheese tea comes in numerous varieties, with black, green and oolong being offered at most shops. Starting out with something lighter may help ease your way into the stronger, more intense teas such as matcha and aromatic black teas. There is really no right or wrong way to drink cheese tea. Be prepared for a flavor profile that changes with virtually every sip! As you drink the tea, the ratio of cream to tea changes throughout; some sips will be sweeter and others more tart. Some shops will leave the lid off for a sans-straw sipping experience (yay, Earth!), which guarantees you to earn your cheese tea right of passage, an amazingly thick milky moustache. If you do use a straw, keep in mind the cheese foam tastes exponentially better when combined with tea. Avoid having a heaping pile of foam left at the end by moving the straw up and down to get a bit of foam with each sip.
Consider adding this funky, sweet and downright refreshing drink to your list of must try treats in Taiwan. We loved trying cheese tea on the streets of Taiwan, so much so that we are saving recipes to try and recreate our own versions at home! We hope you are feeling inspired to get a little cheesy and don a great cheese mustache of your own. Cheers, and bottoms up!
Fruity Tea (Located Across from Sharetea)
YEBO Home
Lattea (one of a few locations)
Aloha, friends! We hope you enjoyed our article on finding cheese tea in Taipei. All of these opinions are our own. The only incentive we received was full bellies and hearts full of bliss. May this information stoke your Taiwan food dreams and encourage your taste buds to discover new joys!
Feel free to contact us with any thoughts, questions, comments or concerns.
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