Bubble Tea and Coffee
August 15th, 2006 | by Loretta |After wandering the streets of Little Italy and Chinatown for a little bit, Angela was in need of a drink. So, we stopped by Fay Da Bakery.
Like most Chinese bakeries, Fay Da is a spot to find buns, cakes and drinks. Their buns are either baked or steamed. Unlike most Chinese bakeries, however, their cakes and other desserts are more influenced by the West. They’ve got cheesecake, mousse and terrines, for instance. And their menu changes quite a bit.
After browsing through their many choices, both for eating and drinking, we decided to stick with drinks.
Angela treated me to iced coffee and I recommended that taro black milk tea with tapioca to her, a drink my friend Hang really enjoyed the last time we went to Fay Da.
Before finalizing her decision to my recommendation, Angela asked a good question: What is taro?
It’s a tuber, like potato, I began, before she cut me off.
Wait, a tuber!?! What?
Ok, for some reason I compared the hardness of fresh taro when cut to the hardness of potato and sweet potato. Which was really pointless. Taro is a tuber that is white with short threads of purple inside when cut. It’s a starch that is used in cooking both savory dishes as well as desserts. When cooked, it has the consistency of a starch potato. Its flavor is rather subtle and often complemented with milk or coconut milk. Taro bubble milk tea is often the most raved about.
Lo and behold, she really enjoyed it. It was sweet and had a good taro flavor to it. And though she struggled a bit to get out every last bubble (it takes much effort to suck so many of them out of a straw,) she liked having those as well. I didn’t taste very much tea in it, so I suspect they used only powdered mix. 
As for my iced coffee? Wow. It had poor consistency throughout the drink; it started out bitter and ended up really sweet. This was after much swirling and shaking my cup. Other than that, it was pretty sweet for coffee with very little bitterness.
Fay Da is located on 191 Centre Street, but has other locations in Manhattan and Queens.