Well Tea
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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Bubble Tea
The Bubble Tea Shop
About The Bubble Tea Shop
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.
Competition here is measured in metres, not blocks. The shop sits on the Golden Village stretch of No. 3 Road, where malls, plazas and food courts stack up on both sides of the street and a tea counter has neighbors in every direction. Most of them belong to chains that arrived from Taiwan, mainland China or Hong Kong with a fixed menu and a fixed look. An independent has to do something those chains do not, and this one is built as a tea and egg waffle counter rather than a tea counter alone.
That combination changes who walks in. A sealed cup is a solo errand. A waffle is something a group stands around and pulls apart, which makes this a stop for four people after dinner rather than one person on the way somewhere else. Bubble tea in Richmond has always been a social format first and a drink second, and it is why so much of the trade in this category happens after school and after dinner rather than in the morning.
Anyone new to it should know that the ordering vocabulary matters. Sweetness and ice levels are usually adjustable, and defaulting to full sugar is how people decide they do not like bubble tea. Ask for less and work up from there. The Golden Village is also the wrong place to be precious about finding a table, since nearly everything on this strip is built for takeaway and the sensible plan is to walk with the cup.
Visiting The Bubble Tea Shop
Where to find it
In the Golden Village neighbourhood of Richmond.
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More places near Golden Village
Other bubble tea shops and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
Choo 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.
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And Drinks
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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Lovin Tea
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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Peanut's Bubble Tea
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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ChooWee Beverage & Cake Boutique
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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