Saturday, June 20, 2009

TT's Lounge

I doubt anybody reads this anymore since I'm such a slacker about it, but every once in awhile, I stumble on something here in town that I deem worthy of further rambling on my "food blog."
TT's Lounge is not even really a restaurant. They do sell a few assorted bowls of instant noodles- which is actually really funny when you think about it. There's even little cut outs or lids or something stuck on the walls showing what they are.
The instant noodles are not the attraction here though. The star here is the "boba."
A boba, if you don't know, is a delicious little dark purple colored gummi-esque ball, made from cassava. They look like big, dark tapiocas, and have a slightly sweet and chewy feel to them. And the best part is what they do with the bobas: they go in your drinks. Yep, you chew your drink. Once you adjust to the concept of this, you could find yourself with an addiction problem similar to mine.
It started just once a month.. Then once a week.... Now I'm finding myself at TTs almost every other day, and I've dragged the kids and the girlfriend down with me.
My frantic quest has been to sample every available slush and tea flavor, but even at my current pace, I'm nowhere close.
I've probably totally confused anyone reading this by now, so let me just lay it out:
TT's has 2 main attractions: hot teas and slushes. Since it's June, I'm going to talk about slushes.
You order them either "boba" or no boba. Anyone ordering no boba is missing out. What you get, is a good sized plastic cup with about an inch and a half of the dark boba balls in the bottom. They pour the delicious fruit slush on top of that and you suck it down through a huge straw specially made to fit the size of the boba.
They flavor list is both huge and exotic-some of my favorites are royal milk tea, green tea mocha, passion fruit, mango, blueberry, kiwi, lemon ... Etc etc etc. They have eveything from Rose and Hibiscus to raspberry ... And they are all crazy good. No artificial tasting flavors here. It's like magic: they have shelves of powders and liquids, and an ice machine and big blenders, and what comes out is... Well... Magic. Chewy icey fruity goodness.
If you've never been, go now! TT's is located on Cary St, in the VCU area one block past Cherry St.