Chatime

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a store that has options for sugar AND ice levels. Amazing. I got the roasted milk tea, no sugar, no ice, with pearls and red bean. The roasted flavor adds depth, though I wish I had branched out more to their more interesting flavors. The queue was insane both times I went — we waited longer for bubble tea than we did for a table at a restaurant during peak dinner hour. One star off for charging for toppings, I’m used to milk tea coming with boba (and being able to opt out).

Average boba place but came here because it was next to where I ate dinner and I haven’t had boba in 1 month. They ran out of the brown rice mousse (so sad :(). Instead, I had the oolong mousse and it wasn’t out of the ordinary. Treated my friend to a bubble milk tea and ordered her milk tea with pudding. Either they didn’t understand our accents or??? But they forgot her pudding so we had to ask for it and still had to pay the extra. Should have been free because of their hearing problems but eh, can’t expect exceptional customer service everywhere. In the end, I’d choose to go somewhere else if I knew it would be better milk tea and better customer service.

Je né connaissais pas du tout cette chaîné de salon bubble tea avant d’arriver à Londres.
C’est une enseigne d’origine taïwanaise. On peut choisir le taux de sucre et de glaçons selon nos envies. C’est vraiment rare d’avoir le choix habituellement. Un très bon point!
Le lieu à China Town est assez étroit et né permet pas de déguster son bubble tea a l’intérieur malheureusement.
J’ai pris un bubble tea a la passion et c’était très bon.
Un de mes amis en a pris un au lait et ça avait l’air vraiment délicieux. Il y a vraiment beaucoup de choix (perles a l’haricot rouge ou tapioca, thé noir, thé matcha… par exemple)
En cherchant sur Unilocal j’ai découvert que la chaîné s’était aussi implantée à Paris. J’espère bientôt à Bordeaux :)

This is the first time I’ve ever tried this, never seen any in France. I love the concept, especially the fact that you can choose everything including the ice and sugar level (none for me!). I was disappointed by my bubble matcha milk tea though which I would’ve imagined more flavourful but the taro bubble was a new weird experience I enjoyed (especially how you can eat them with the straw). So I was only half satisfied but it’s something to try again !

The queue here was absurd. But I’m inclined to say that my taro milk tea with grass jelly was worth it. I seldom ever get taro bubble tea because it’s usually a powder base, which just isn’t my style. Chatime uses real taro and you can definitely taste the difference! The flavor is light, but nicely refreshing.
If taro doesn’t float your boat, there are so many other options to try out. All their ingredients seem pretty fresh due to the insane volume of business that is constantly coming through the door.

Just your traditional bubble tea done fairly okay by international standards, but actually considered good in the UK since most here are pretty dire.
Service is as per your Chinatown standard level of rude and contemptuous. I just get the usual original Assam milk tea with pearls, when they’re available that is. Most of the time I go here, they’ve run out of pearls and milk… Not sure how that is acceptable at a bubble tea place, yet there’s always a queue.
Don’t even bother with their fresh milk versions

I know chatime is a chain, but I was my first time going there. I had a great experience with the bubble tea! I almost wanted to get another one to take home!
I got the mango QQ which has lychee jelly and tapioca but they ran out! I asked if they could give me jelly instead and they let me! So nice (but that’s only because they don’t have the tapioca)!! The mango flavor tasted very real and captured the true mango juice flavor! Very aromatic too.
My friend had the roasted black tea with grass jelly and the roasted tea gave it a novel and different twist. I enjoyed it! But I don’t get the pricing. On the menu it says £2 something but when I ordered it, it ended up being £3 something close to £4. I wasn’t sure if it was the tax or it was the add-​ons…
Overall, the taste and quality of the bubble tea and service were very good!

They have amazing drinks here! Definitely recommend getting the QQ mango drink where it had mango tea with half jelly and half boba! Reminded me of home :) they have a lot of different choices to choose from, from milk tea to regular teas and have branches all over the world so you know it’s great! It’s a must go if you have any boba cravings

Just a quick and short update on this place —
They have started to charge if you add other ingredients or even add pearls to drinks that do not automatically come with pearls. It’s an additional 50p. I ordered the Chatime Roasted Milk Tea — this apparently does not automatically come with pearls, extra 50p on top for me :(
The drinks still taste good, it’s just that it’s a tad more expensive now :(Come here if you want an authentic «treat».

PROS — When there is a queue for an establishment, it probably is pretty damn good.
Well, the good news is this place will always have a queue — making it hard to miss. As an avid bubble tea drinker, I tried FOUR bubble tea joints in ONE day. I will now bring you exclusive coverage of what I found to be the best bubble tea around London.
Chatime may always have a busy queue but they are organized and quite efficient. I really enjoy their original «Chatime» bubble tea with basic tapicoa bubbles (#1) however I have also tried their Matcha milk tea with red bean (#4) and mango QQ (#7). Their menu is big and it ranges from fresh brewed tea, mousse, fruit tea, juice (QQ), milk tea, tea lattes to smoothies and coffee with different toppings. If it is your first time there and you haven’t found your top 5 staples, the choices may overwhelm you.
CONS — Even after you order your drink, there is another queue to retrieve your drink. Another con is that the font on their menu is VERY small (or maybe I’m just blind), I found it helpful to take a picture of their menu up by the cashier on my phone and just zooming in to make my choice while in queue. Side note: #4 (the matcha milk tea with red bean) was tasty but I think it gave me a tummy ache afterwards
CONCLUSION — I will definitely be back as this bubble tea joint is better than Café TPT, Boba Jam and HK Diner. ⁴⁄₅ stars because I’m still rounding up bubble tea results from places I haven’t tried yet :)

I was so happy when I discovered Chatime existed in London, and not too far of a walk from where I was staying at that. I went here all the time last fall and it’s basically as close to the real thing as it can get.
I usually get the black (occasionally green) tea with nata de coco (I love nata de coco! So happy they have it), which tastes basically the same as it tastes in Taiwan. The milk tea tasted a little weird the first time I got it — there was a slightly weird nutty taste? It got better later on I think.
Cons…there seem to be periods of time where they run out of bubbles. The line will be ginormous if you go on Friday afternoons/​weekends. Also, the staff do speak English, but it’s slightly hard to understand when they’re shouting out numbers (although that might also be because it’s usually pretty chaotic when I go…) As with many other bubble tea places, it’s also cash-​only.

I thought bubblology was the best place for Bubble Tea in London. I was wrong.
This place has a plethora of choices. That might be a bad thing. But you know you always have something new to try there. I just love it.
I have never had a bad drink.
I don’t remember names particularly but today I had red bean milk tea hot with pearls. mmmm. it was good. I also tasted a bit of hazelnut milk tea with pearls which was sugary and had that nutella kind of flavour to it. loved both. I would definitely go there. It is a worldwide chain and now I know why it has been so successful.

Long queue all the time, but worth it! It’s quite authentic. Pearl chatime tea is as good as I expected. Sales girls are pretty, polite, and energetic.
The only issue is that the smell of plastic is quite strong in their straws. I suspect it will have some health impact, or at least influence the flavor of tea. Not sure whether it is always the case.

Even though they had a dry spell of not having boba or tea in stock (how does this happen to a business based on these 2 ingredients???) for about 4 weeks, I still go back for more. I prefer my milk tea tasting more tea-​like instead of being overpowered by artificial sweeteners and flavors like Boba Jam or Bubbleology. At Chatime you can adjust the sugar level to your preference or opt out of sugar completely. It tastes great cold or hot. This is the only place I get milk tea/​boba in London.

Came here twice (two different branches). Both time they were out of boba. And milk tea. It was before 6pm — not doing very well for a milk tea boba place…
Oh and the staff was super rude about it too

One of the few places that makes authentic bubble tea in London.
My favorite is the roasted milk tea (with half sugar and tapioca). Really smooth with a hint of roasted tea. Their tapioca balls are really good. Small, chewy and a little sweet to make them special. I don’t usually order tapioca balls due to health reasons but I ll make an exception for chatime.
Minus one star for: constant long queue and cash only.

Definitely a good boba shop. Pretty extensive menu if you’re into that. Their regular milk tea with boba (pearl tea) is really good. The tea itself is more subtle in flavor than I prefer but still good and the boba itself is just the right combination of chewy but not too chewy and sweet but not too sweet.
They also let you specify ice and sugar level which is always a plus. I usually prefer «half sugar» and «less ice».

I’m generally a fan of chatime, although being a franchise, the quality can’t always be guaranteed! This one has been good — a little bit on the sweet side, but it’s pretty decent version in relations to all the other chatime that i have been to.
About 3 quid for a bubble tea. The lines are generally long but the wait is not too bad as they go through the motions relatively fast. Nicely decorated and good seating for waiting, but for sitting in.
I generally get the roasted milk tea with coffee jelly, no added sugar.

Cha time has done REALLY well for itself, they now have a shop slap bang in the middle of chinatown and given it’s status across the world, they ALWAYS have customers. But the service is slow, it takes about 10 minutes to get my tea done, and that’s not really that acceptable, especially when your contenders are doing it much faster. They need to take a good hard look at how they process the system, maybe even hire an extra pair of hands.
but they do offer a nice waiting area, if a little clinical. I actually opted for a match red bean with less sugar and even that was too sweet, but I do enjoy they offer customisable sweetness. They definitely stepped it up since my first visit but I think they still have alot of improvements to do.

I had to wait a little while for my bubble tea to be ready, even though the shop wasn’t overly busy, but when it arrived it tasted great. I had a fruit tea, passion fruit flavour, which was very yummy and refreshing. The price was reasonable in relation to other bubble tea shops (£3.25 for a small) and the location is great. It’s open till late too, 11pm each day, so handy after a night out.

Wow! I can hardly keep up with the explosion of bubble tea places in London
Chatime is a well-​known Taiwanese bubble tea chain, which already has one outlet in Soho, less than 5 minutes from this new location. However, its prime position on Chinatown’s main drag of Gerrard Street and its familiar brand name in the Far East will ensure its success, I’m sure
It was certainly rammed today when I was there. The good luck new opening hampers were still evident and there was already a line snaking out of the door. The limited seating was fully occupied but the queue was still good-​natured
They do a variety of teas in different flavours with different toppings. What I like is that you can customise the sweetness and the amount of ice in your drink, so you get your drink just the way you want it. There are extra toppings available but disappointingly for me, no popping boba
I like their fruit flavours and on a hot day like today, bubble tea is a good way to cool off
I’m sure this outlet is going to be popular