A post-dinner walk in Melbourne turns into a bubble tea adventure at Instea where Chanel bottles meet bubble tea in the most delicious way. So are these fancy bubble teas worth the price? Come along Dear Reader where we answer that very question!
It was around 9:30pm in Melbourne and Laura and I had just finished a rich French meal and we both felt the need to go for a brisk walk. "Should we go to Instea?" she suggested. As soon as she showed me the bottles I was in. Laura had visited it already and really enjoyed the bubble teas and was keen to visit again.
Instea is a Malaysian bubble tea brand and so far the only branch in Australia is in Melbourne on Swanston street. The setup and store is simple and the staff is friendly and patient with us trying to choose what we want to order. There are six choices of tea for the glass bottles and then there are also classic bubble tea selections. There's a small table in front of the order counter as well as another level with lots more tables upstairs.
We decide on three of the glass bottle drinks – these don’t come cheap at $13.80 per bottle but as a saying goes there’s a sucker born every day and the inexplicable joy that we get when they handover our tea seems worth it. The Galaxy is a mixture of butterfly pea flower to colour it and honey and lemon and is a mild, sweet purple drink with iridescent shine when you shake it up. It is perfectly pleasant if not revelatory. It is beautiful though.
The Blue Silk is an interesting one. Every sip is a different one. You may get some milk. You may get some butterfly tea syrup or you may get a slurp of Yakult. This is much sweeter than the Galaxy above but it's actually both of our favourite.
Mr. Boba is the second most popular glass tea with brown sugar and milk and a generous amount of chewy boba balls. The brown sugar does make this much sweeter than the other drinks so this is your best bet if you like your drinks very sweet. Are they worth it? You're really paying for the glass bottle as each bottle measures around 1 cup/250ml/8.8flozs which is much smaller than a typical bubble tea drink.
We also decide to get our usual bubble tea order. My bubble tea drink order every time is a grapefruit tea made with jasmine green tea with 25% sugar. It is so refreshing and delicious especially when you get the little bits of grapefruit pulp.
Laura is on a matcha kick so she goes with the green tea latte with sweetened red beans and 25% sugar. This is absolutely delicious. The red beans a lot of sweetness to this drink so you could probably get away with zero sugar in this too.
The only thing that we didn’t really go for was the waffle. We chose a panda and waffle with pandan kaya jam but it just wasn’t strong enough in flavour and the waffle was quite dry in texture. If anything I'd say stick to the drinks.
So tell me Dear Reader, do you like the sound of this bubble tea? Would you go for a glass bottle or a regular bubble tea? What is your bubble tea order?
This food was independently paid for.
Instea
210 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Open 7 days 12–11 pm
Phone: 0402 428 743
https://www.instagram.com/instea.au/?hl=en
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