Disgus-TEA-ng

TeaTap Cafe, Wilson cor. P. Guevarra St.
San Juan, Metro Manila, Philippines

         The design of TeaTap Cafe is nothing but homey. It sparks a sense of nostalgia that brings me back in my college days wherein I used to study for my exams there, hang out with friends, and as far as I remember we even brought our own cards (Monopoly Deal) and board games to play there! My friends and I used to spend hours and hours on a regular basis but all for the wrong reasons. Wrong as it may seem, I am very willing to pay the price of around Php 100 for every drink and not even think about ordering food as long as I get to hang out in their cozy café. Numerous times I have been there on weeknights and see them packed and I credit it to the place’s laid back feel. However, how the interiors reflect the place does not mean that it goes the same with their food and drinks. I have a really good feeling that people who stay there, just like me (used to), pay for the silence, the added productivity, the elimination of distractions when studying at home but never the food or the milk tea.


 

 Homey feel in the cafe               

It is quite obvious that they invested towards their interiors and not much on producing good milk tea. Were they supposed to open a design studio but decided to go make a milk tea shop instead? After couple of visits, a number of “second-chances” made me believe that this place is really lagging behind Gong Cha, Happy Lemon, Share Tea and Chatime, ranked according to my preference.





Formosa Roasted Milk Tea
with pearls + Mousse, 

50% Sugar level, Php115

Rating:



I ordered their Formosa Roasted Milk Tea, chose pearls to go with it and ordered that it had cream cheese mousse with a sugar level of 50%, similar to what I would order in other milk tea shops. The price level is ok, quite at par with its competitors. Within 3 minutes, I got to get hold of my milk tea, which is actually pretty quick compared to Happy Lemon who will have you wait 10 minutes minimum on busy hours. Roasted teas are supposed to be flavourful and more aromatic than unroasted tea but this drink I found lacking in flavour and is overpowered by milk and the “half-sugar” level. Puzzling though how a drink with half sugar still is so dominant. Harsh but I think I found the recipe for this drink, a tea cup of those teas we have in Chinese restaurants, glass of milk, sugar and pearls. On a positive note, I found the cream cheese mousse very good, I find the balance between the cheese flavour and the sweetness of the mousse very well balanced with good consistency. What I didn’t like about the mousse though is that the serving is much compared to other shops. For Php 25, I kind of expected more than less than an inch of mousse.

Lemon Yakult with pearls,
75% sugar level, Php 90
Rating:

      On a separate visit, i got to try one of their non-tea drinks which can also be found in most other tea shops, Lemon Yakult. I love Yakult. I was beyond happy I saw a one liter bottle of Yakult in a grocery on a recent trip to Taiwan, simple joys in life. Needless to say, I purchased it and shamelessly finished it within hours. This drink however, I found lacking in lemon flavor. I am not sure what kind of lemon juice, fresh or instant, they mixed Yakult with but I am sure whatever they put in it, wasn't enough. Drinking this is like drinking a sweeter, blander version of Yakult, with ice, and pearls, a bit like Chamyto a couple of years back.  

Wintermelon Milk Tea
with Egg Pudding, Php95
Rating:

      No expectations no disappointments. I was pretty surprised with this drink as  it was actually pretty good. It tastes like the ones in Gong Cha, better than the one in Sharetea and a whole lot better than the ones in Chatime. I found this drink to have the perfect balance of everything. The drink is just right, not too sweet and unlike the other drinks I tried, not too bland, the flavor of the wintermelon is very evident. The egg pudding is also very good, it is not too sweet which allowed the egg flavor to be tasted fully. I really like this drink.




Chilli Cheese Dynamite, Php120
Rating:

      I also ordered their "Must Try" items in the menu, the Chilli Cheese Dynamite, the Pasta Carbonara, and the "to-come-back-for" Takoyaki according to the cashier. The Chilli Cheese Dynamite are green chilli peppers filled with cheese, wrapped with spring roll or "lumpia" wrapper and deeped fried to a crisp, perfect for late night snacks. It is pretty obvious though that cheap, commercial brand cheese was used to fill up the chillies which actually is a pretty forgivable since no one with a correct mind would put expensive cheeses in a chilli pepper only to be deep fried and eaten as a snack right? I consider this dish to already be at the tip of its game. Tastewise, there are very limited options to choose from to improve this dish, adding chorizo in the filling perhaps? Aside from that, the only improvement I can see for this dish is to lower the price. Php 120 is just too expensive for six tiny pieces of these dynamites which would, on estimate, cost maybe Php 30 to produce. 

Pasta Carbonara, Php180
Rating:

      Their carbonara tastes really similar to those 50 peso carbonaras we could usually get from school canteens. The noodles were very hard in the middle, obviously cause it was not cooked enough and it kind of tastes like it wasnt drained well. I also found the dish to be too bland except when eaten with bacon which I think they relied too much on for saltiness together with the ultra generous amount of parmesan cheese. Obviously a point of improvement for this dish is to COOK THE NOODLES PROPERLY! Aside from that, i think they have to season the white sauce well with salt and lessen the amount of cheese they put in the dish. This is definitely something i will never order again, if ever i come back.







Takoyaki Balls, Php120
Rating:

      Their self proclaimed "to-come-back-for" is the clincher for this entry i am writing now. I was kind of excited to try this dish when the cashier told me that this dish is very very good. I even had this dish last cause as we all say, save the best for last, right? No, not in this case. What i thought was supposed to be a good dish i found really awful, two small pieces of octopus are inside each Takoyaki ball. Each serving has 6 pieces which means that there are only 12 tiny pieces of octopus in the whole dish and when i say tiny i mean



Takoyaki Balls from Japan
from: http://tinyurl.com/8arguax

half-of-a-crouton tiny.  They put too much teriyaki sauce (too much its too salty) and a bit of bonito flakes which really helped with the flavor and aroma of this dish. Aside from the tiny pieces of croutons, i mean octopus, the dish sounds ok so far right? Right, not until i tell you that the Takoyaki balls were very much under cooked that I could taste the uncooked flour on my first bite. Talk about a "to-come-back-for" dish. I believe they cooked it in too high heat that it looks cooked in the outside but still raw in the inside, a very important point of improvement. The filling of the Takoyaki balls tastes so good, just like flour. On the right is how a takoyaki ball should look like. I would actually accept at least half or a third of the octopus in the picture to be in the Takoyaki Balls I ordered but half a crouton sized cut of octopus? Crazy! 

The manager hardly smiles, not that I want him to smile at me but I think it contributes to the experience as a whole. Aside from that, service of the staff was pretty ok, they keep smiles on their faces, were very easy to talk to and were very apologetic when I raised my concern about the Takoyaki Balls.

My Ratings:

Food:                                 -Was there any planning done here?

           Service:                                                              - Satisfactory

Ambiance:                                                                         -It's actually pretty good

Price Level:                                                                       -It's actually pretty ok 

Overall:                                                                         - I will come back but i will need a ton of
                                                                                                                          convincing.

Substitutes:

Happy Lemon:                                                                       - So-so Alternative, but still way way
                                                                                                                          better.

Share Tea:                                                                -A very good place to have your milk
                                                                                                                         tea fix instead

            Gong Cha:                                                    - Best Possible Alternative, prepare for
                                                                                                                         an awesome milk tea experience.

I had to go to this place numerous times to come up with a very accurate review, ever since I started this blog, I gave this restaurant three “second chances” already and now I am confident when I say that it will need a lot of convincing for me to come back to this place.

Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!

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