Bubble Tea
An Aberdeen Square shop steps from the SkyTrain doing dessert-like drinks: taro and purple sweet potato milk, oreo slush with cheese foam, salted cream toppings. More indulgent than most of the strip, and the portions are generous.
Coming up from the Canada Line platform puts you essentially inside Aberdeen Square, which is the whole argument for this location. Steps from the SkyTrain is not marketing language in this case. The complex works as a food and drink annex to the much larger Aberdeen Centre across the road, and it catches everybody arriving from Vancouver or heading home after an evening on Alexandra Road.
Choo Tea sits at the dessert end of the bubble tea spectrum rather than the tea end, and that distinction matters more than newcomers expect. The Golden Village supports plenty of shops doing restrained fruit teas and properly brewed bases. It also supports shops where the drink is standing in for pudding. Ordering the second kind on top of a full dinner is a mistake most people make exactly once.
Match the shop to the moment and the whole area becomes easier to navigate. After hot pot on Alexandra Road, something heavy is the wrong call and a light oolong is the right one. On a cold January afternoon with forty minutes to kill before a film at Aberdeen, the reverse holds entirely. The train is the sensible way in on a weekend regardless, because the Aberdeen complexes draw the heaviest traffic in the Golden Village between about noon and six, and the surrounding roads reflect it.
In the Golden Village neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other bubble tea shops and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
A newer Yaohan Centre shop that steams its own taro and ube in house instead of reaching for powder, which shows up clearly in the texture of the milk lattes. Fruit teas and matcha round out a short menu. Find it on the No. 3 Road frontage.
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An independent Golden Village shop that pairs its bubble tea with Hong Kong egg waffles and ice cream, so most orders leave with a drink in one hand and a waffle in the other. Afternoon and evening hours only, running later on weekends.
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A long-standing Golden Village Taiwanese tea house that is as much a restaurant as a boba shop, serving rice plates and snacks until late. Handy when half your group wants dinner and the other half only wants a milk tea.
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An Aberdeen-area shop that stays open close to midnight, which is why it turns up on every late-night Richmond boba list. Fruit teas and milk teas with the usual topping range, ordered from a small counter rather than a sit-down room.
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A family-run stall in the Richmond Public Market food court that has been pouring milk tea for more than twenty years, long before the Golden Village boba boom. Also does fresh fruit drinks and Taiwanese wheel cakes. Cheap and unpretentious.
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An unusual crossover at No. 3 and Cook: fruit-forward bubble tea on one side, French-style low-sugar cakes on the other. Mango pomelo sago and passion fruit teas get ordered most, and the cake boxes make it a gift stop as well.
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