Thai tea, a delicious blend of Ceylon or Assam black tea, vanilla, sweetened condensed milk and Yellow #6 popular in Thai restaurants and boba shops, is one of my favorite drinks in the world, but the creamy, vibrant orange beverage is in danger.
Corporate chains, quick to capitalize on the growing popularity of the drink, have rolled out various Thai tea products of their own but fail to deliver a quality product. Now, consumers eager to try Thai tea for the first time at these restaurants, do not get the proper, authentic experience and could be turned off from the drink forever.
When Shake Shack announced its Thai tea milkshake, I was excited to try it but upon the first sip I was immediately disappointed. It tasted fine, kind of like vanilla and caramel, but it barely tasted like tea at all. I also expected a beautiful bright orange, instead of the muted peach color I was served.
Colectivo has its own Thai tea iteration that may just be more disappointing than Shake Shack’s. Its Thai tea is simply not Thai tea at all; it’s just a black tea latte with sweetened condensed milk.
They use no yellow food dye and no vanilla, two ingredients that are crucial parts of Thai tea’s identity. Colectivo calling this $6 abomination a “Thai tea latte” is an insult to the beverage.
My outrage is not an overreaction, because the bastardization of Thai tea closely mirrors other tea products that have been ruined by corporate chains.
Chai has a place on café menus across the country at varying degrees of quality. For every decent cup you can find, there exists a watered down, under-spiced version called a “chai tea latte” that’s at best a poor drinking experience and at worst a potential microaggression.
Matcha has also been victimized by this corporate tea epidemic. Gritty, grassy and overly sweet green tea powder has been on Starbucks’ menu since 2005. They revamped the product this year, now selling a barely passable beverage that took almost 20 years to perfect.
Matcha is also ubiquitous in Milwaukee, with almost every café in the city having a version of it on their menu. Unfortunately, most of them use Rishi’s sweetened matcha powder, a poorer quality, muddy green version of the delicious drink.
Rishi’s tea is certainly not bad, but for cafes to charge $7-$8 for an iced latte, I think we should demand higher quality.
This is exactly the case for Thai tea. I was excited to see chains selling Thai tea because it is a beautifully simple and delicious drink that I seriously doubted they could screw up, but this overpriced, inauthentic garbage is so far removed from the beverage I love.
Leave the Thai tea to the people who know what they are doing. Thai-namite on the East Side and Public Market has a wonderful Thai tea that exemplifies what makes the beverage so great. It is creamy, sweet, fragrant and best of all: bright orange.
Xankia, a Vietnamese restaurant in Westown, also serves a surprisingly good version of the beverage that is a little closer to Marquette. SereniTea, Marquette’s on-campus boba shop is another spot that serves a far superior version than these corporate chains.
With plenty of better local options available, we can put a stop to the corporate tea epidemic before it claims this delicious drink.
This story was written by Joseph Schamber. He can be reached at joseph.schamber@marquette.edu.
