Chatime

Went for Brown rice milk green tea with pearls. Hot as it was late and I was cold. Drink wasn’t bad. The pearls are some of the better ones I’ve tried. They are on par with some of the ones I tried back in Asia and trust me Ive tried a lot!
They have many different flavours and combination of pearls, grass jelly and whatever you want to put in your drink. Will definitely be back to try some more combination.
Also, I’ve been told they have a online payment system which when it works offer you a free drink after your fifth purchase. Again magic word is when it works. Lol

This place is located in the heart of Chinatown and each time I visited during my one week trip, this placed was packed especially late at night.
The boba and tea are delicious and keep in one it is pricy but I give that to the London prices. They get one star taken off since they ran out of a bunch of things including what they recommended and grass jelly! That’s like a Japanese restaurant running out of rice. No bueno!

Ive been to Chatime in the U. S, Canada, and China. How can they justify charging almost double for drinks in the UK?!! The price is ridiculous consider the ingredients are pretty much standardised. That aside, the drinks and boba are both just decent, nothing to complain but also nothing to rave about. However, if you want a more authentic Taiwanese milk tea taste, this is your place!

I have been to this place a lot, but never wrote a review, oops! Well have no fear, because I just had my birthday recently and because I have their loyalty card (exclusive btw, you had to buy something from their store for their 2^nd year anniversary to get it), and it allows me to get a free bubble tea!!!
It used to be that you could only get regular milk tea for it, but they have changed their minds again and now you can pick anything but only small size. Ah well, no problem, I just had a huge lunch and even a small bubble tea would suffice.
The one thing to bear in mind is that Chatime now charges you for pearls. Yes, you heard that right, I believe it was 50p last time I checked. A good way to get around the «extras» charges is to order QQ tea only. You don’t get pearls but at least you don’t have to pay for extras either for the little bits in your tea. I usually go for the Mango QQ.
The pearls are generally the correct sort of chewiness here but now and again I would have a cup here and it would be overcooked tapioca pearls so it’s sometimes hit and miss. When I came here on Friday the pearls were back to normal again. I sometimes think it’s because the footfall here is a lot less than the one in Gerrard Street Chinatown and so they may have stored pearls overnight, leading it to taste horrible.

No not bubbles like in washing up liquid! The other sort. In tea. You can drink it with a straw.

I got a roasted milk tea with pearls and nearly died of a heart attack at the price, but that is besides the point.
The tea itself was lacklustre and the pearls! The pearls were not chewy like they should be. The centres were slightly undercooked and were a bit hard. I think the mark of a great bubble tea place should be great tea and great pearls. This place has ok tea and crappy pearls.
Would I come back? Only for a severe craving and not in the right mind.

Good milk tea!
I ordered hot pearl milk tea as it was cold outside and I was really happy to see the paper cup rather than the plastic cup used for iced drinks. Many shops actually use this plastic cup for hot ones as well. As a result the drink can only be warm, not hot. But with the paper cup, it was proper hot tea and I really enjoyed it!

Really impressed with the boba here! Popped in for a quick bubble tea takeaway with a friend last night and we were in and out in under 10 minutes with our glorious, freshly made bubble tea. I had the red bean milk tea with bubbles, and it was the perfect combination of sweet and savoury, with a bit of added sugar and red beans mixed in with the tapioca bubbles. The ladies working were friendly and answered our questions about recommendations for types of tea to get. 4* because there was very little inside seating (3 stools at a bar), and when we visited 2 of the stools were taken so we couldn’t hang about.

My friend said she knew a yummy bubble tea place, but when we got to Chatime, they were out of all the major items, including the milk teas, tapioca balls and smoothies…
So I ended up trying the oolong latte with red bean, which was quite yummy, especially on a chilly night!
Service: very quick. They literally have it ready once you are done paying.
Ambience: very casual. Most people take the drinks to go, but there are a couple bar stools in case you want to stay indoors.

I got bubble tea envy at this place, why? because everyone’s drinks were better than my crappy hazelnut milk tea, which didn’t taste like hazelnut, just really really diluted nutty milk water. Sad faces all around.
Since we decided to chill on their nice park bench outside chatting, I actually went in and got Jules H option of a banana mik tea which was much better. They were really nice about me changing (I did offer to pay for another one, so not to be a pain. LOL. So British) I just really didnt like the hazelnut milk tea. Just no.

I really hate bubble tea. I thought it was the thought of chewing something in my tea, but it turns out I just hate the texture of the tapioca pearls they put in it. So I was a bit apprehensive about coming to Chatime. However, everyone insisted that the tea is widely customizable, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. No weird tapioca pearls required!
So they have a lot of choices. I ended up going for a matcha and red bean smoothie because it was SO HOT OUTSIDE. And it was tasty. But too sweet for me. I like my tea to taste like tea. I don’t even put sugar in my hot tea. That’s how hardcore I am. Luckily, Chatime is so customizable they let you change the amount of sugar they add to your tea. That’s right! So next time I could go for half sugar (or even less!) It probably didn’t help that the sweet red beans were blended as well, and that just added another whole level of sweetness.
Yeah if I’m in Soho (which I often am) and need some delicious afternoon refreshment (that isn’t a cocktail), Chatime is on my list!

CHAAAATIMEEEEE!!!
Hands down the BEST boba in London. Although a bit more on the pricier side, but the taste of the milk tea here is incomparable! The service was not the greatest, but the store itself has a very inviting atmosphere! :)

£3.25 for a cup of bubble tea is a hefty price if you have competitors in the same area who have better service.
There are multiple times where the tea has to be returned because it wasn’t prepared according to the instructions. Ie, no ice becomes 100% ice. (???) Fortunately, the staff aren’t that nitpicky when that happens. However, I do have to comment that the cashier for Chatime is quite unpleasant when dealing with customers at times.
Also, there are multiple instances when I ordered «roasted milk bubble tea» but there is no roasted taste. a first-​timer will not be able to tell the difference, but having had Chatime in Asia, I know how a real roasted milk bubble tea tastes like.
unfortunately, this London branch has a lot of catching up to do to reach the standards of those in Asia.

Best bubble tea in London! By far. They do both hot and cold bubble teas for about £3.20. The consistency of their milk tea is great – not too diluted and slightly ‘thicker’ than other bubble tea places. It’s more authentic. Service is very quick and some members of staff are quite friendly (usually those who speak English more fluently), others sometimes struggle to understand what you’re saying. The shop is quite small with virtually no seating space – just about three stools, but you’re not expected to hang around anyway.

*DIES*
The massive queue of azn girls waiting out in the cold must mean something.
Once you get over the fact that you’re paying £3.25 for bubble tea, you’ll warm up to it. Best bubble tea in London in my opinion. The only reason I didn’t give it fives stars is because they seem to run out of ingredients quite often and service can be quite slow. I once went in on a FRIDAY hoping to order some milk tea, but they were out of some ingredient. I went back everyday and only got my milk tea on TUESDAY. That’s quite a long time! But apparently I keep coming back.

My classmate from Taiwan was raving about how this is the BEST PLACE TO GET BOBA in London.
After living in Taiwan for half a year and being from SoCal, I have high expectations for Boba.
The first attempt my friend and I had to go to CHATIME when we eventually got to the front of the line we found out they were out of BOBA (pearls). WOW a drink place out of BOBA. Disheartened we left without beverages.
The next time I went alone. I was waiting for my friend and I wanted to waste some time. I went and ordered a passionfruit green tea with boba. The tea was pretty good but the BOBA was HARD. NOT GOOD. NOT HAPPY. I highly doubt I’ll be ordering boba from this establishment again, maybe in a couple months I’ll dare to try it again.

Walking past this little bubble/​milk tea joint in Soho, I didn’t realise that it was part of a vast Chatime empire from down under until I read the reviews here
The shop isn’t the largest and in comparison with some of its nearby competition like Bubbleology and Boba Jam, the menu doesn’t seem the most extensive either. I didn’t spot anything too unusual on the menu on my visit though Dan P is hoping that Chatime may perhaps bring some of their more exotic flavours like roasted brown rice milk tea over in the future
My fruit tea was nice with the jelly but at the moment, it’s not the top of my list

Meeting a friend in Covent Garden who’s always late I thought I’d go along to see what all the fuss was about at Chatime.
Slightly disappointed at the size and seating options, this is a place to grab a drink on the go.
The menu is vast and by judging by how established this chain is it knows what its doing on that front.
This is the first Chatime in London, in Soho where there are plenty of other on the go options so defo stop by this one.
I got the roasted milk tea option with jelly which you can suck through the straw, if you thought boboa balls where a strange sensation wait till you suck on one of these.
I’ll be going back often, at least until I’ve drunk my way through the menu.
See you there.

Finally! Our Antipodean cousins are lucky enough to have so many Chatimes littered around their cities such that you’re seemingly never more than 5 minutes away from tasty, authentic Taiwanese-​style milk tea… And now London has one! They don’t (yet?) have all the flavours — roasted brown rice milk tea being a notable omission! argh — but as far as bubble tea goes it’s damned fine. One of our party had a grape slushy, his three minute brain freeze being testament to how much he enjoyed it.
Next time you’re needing your milk/​bubble tea fix, look no further than Chatime. They’re also open til midnight for your nocturnal cravings.