Cravingz, Ahmedabad

Cravingz,
4th Floor, AlphaOne Mall
Vastrapur
Ahmedabad

We loved bubble tea when we lived in Dubai. It was such a refreshing drink and the little bubbles were a pleasure to savour in your mouth. Some of them rolled around and you had to bite into it like a jelly, some of them popped in a little explosion of concentrated flavour on your tongue.

So I was really excited, when I saw that Cravingz was offering Bubble Tea here in Apnu Amdavad.

Bubble tea, also known as pearl milk tea or boba milk tea, is a Taiwanese tea-based drink invented in tea shops in Taichung, Taiwan, during the 1980s. Most bubble tea recipes contain a tea base mixed with fruit or milk. Ice-blended versions are usually mixed with fruit or syrup, resulting in a slushy consistency. *** from Wikipedia

We had just had lunch and coffees, so we had only ordered one bubble tea between 3 of us and I'm thankful for small mercies.

The whole place smelled sour. Now I understand, that yoghurt / dahi does have a slightly sour smell at times (fresh yoghurt isn't sour, its only when its kept out for too long that it starts turning sour), but the sour smell was actually quite nauseating when we entered. I should have taken that as a warning, but since we wanted bubble tea and not the frozen yoghurt, we persevered.

We asked for a couple of flavours - which were all out of stock (this was Monday evening), finally we settled on a small pineapple bubble tea (79/-). We wanted pineapple popping bubbles, but those were out of stock too, so we took the orange popping bubbles.

The pineapple tea was like an oversweet rasna, absolutely no hint of citrus at all, except for the few shreds of pineapple at the bottom of the glass. The only saving grace was the orange popping bubbles that were quite good. But that oversweet concoction is definitely not worth wasting time or calories over.

The benefits of Bubble Tea (why it is so popular in China and Taiwan where it originated) are :

• slows ageing
• boosts immunity
• aids weight loss
• helps fight chronic illness
• increases mental alertness.

The Cravingz website also boasts of these benefits. But what we drank could not be considered in the least bit healthy at all. 

The color scheme was a Barbie Pink with a little white, which made us feel like we had walked into a teenage girls bedroom.  So, maybe that's their target audience, but it was very off-putting to us. (We did however liek the quotes on the wall, that we read when waiting for our order)

Given the sour smell that pervaded the whole place (I still feel sick in my stomach when I think of it), I'm definitely not going back to try the frozen yoghurt either.

Rating : 0.5 / 5 (the 0.5 is for the popping bubbles, nothing else)