The compelling combo of milk, tea, and tapioca pearls was conceived in front of schools, in tea carts serving pre-teens, for them to slurp on the way home. Chances are you weren’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a cup. In the years since, boba became a global phenomena. There are several establishments in San Francisco offering the beverage, and the newest one, Boba Guys, aims to bring it to new, artisanal heights.
Boba Guys is the brainchild of Bin Chen and Andrew Chau. They envisioned a pop-up boba shop after their favorite boba purveyor off Valencia Street closed shop.After the two first met at work a couple of years ago (Andrew is a business manager at bag company Timbuk2, while Bin is the creative director there, and also runs the eclectic blog youmightfindyourself.com ), they’d incorporated that boba spot into their lunch breaks. But after getting into the habit, they lost their supplier. That’s when they realized they could do it themselves. Author Malcolm Gladwell helped.
“We both like Gladwell a lot, and he says you need 10,000 hours of practice to become great at something,” explains Andrew. “We were like, man, we got 10,000 hours on this. Both our moms are Taiwanese, and we drink so much milk tea that we can taste all kinds of milk, what sweetener was used, and we can taste different kinds of teas. We figured we can do this on our own.”
When Bin and Andrew told their respective moms they were starting a boba milk tea business, the matriarchs both laughed. Why would these two — employed, mind you — young men throw themselves into the unstable life of the food industry? But for Bin and Andrew, it was only natural. They’ve both been boba fans since childhood, and the drink has a warm spot in their hearts. When Andrew was in middle school, he used to hitch a ride with older friends to go to Wonderful Foods in the Sunset. “It was a 25-minute drive from South City where I lived, and I still think it’s a great place,” he says. “I was there yesterday, and it was so good. I’ve had it for 18 years.” Bin, who grew up in Texas, remembers childhood Sunday trips to Houston, where his family would get groceries and indulge in “super authentic boba.” When he moved to San Francisco, he was reacquainted with boba at, guess where, Wonderful Foods. “It’s kind of what we’re building toward,” he says.
But moms will be moms. “For them, it’s such a lowly job. It took some convincing,” Bin admits. “For Asian Americans like us, our parents worked really hard,” Andrew adds. “I come from a restaurant family. My dad, who’s a Muni bus driver now, had a restaurant in Fisherman’s Wharf. When he got out of the business, my parents told me to never do restaurants ever again.”
They had both witnessed older family members making boba without a recipe in sight, but they have no intention of playing it by ear. Bin says Andrew totally geeked out about the process. “He was really, really meticulous about recording each little experiment that we did. We had a running spreadsheet from the get-go, with the measurements, times, temperatures, everything. And we just kind of honed in more and more on it. It was really nerdy.” Andrew, indeed the left brain to Bin’s right brain in the operation, is dead serious about this. “We had to do it scientifically. Otherwise we couldn’t have replicated it at such a big level as we do now. We had to do it that way. “
On October 8, a warm Saturday afternoon, Boba Guys held their official launch. They set up in the new Ken Ken Ramen brick-and-mortar shop at 18th Street and Mission, wearing white lab coats — a tribute to their chemistry-lab, Breaking Bad take on boba production (without the drugs, of course). They arranged their milk and boba containers according to a flow chart Andrew had created in another act of extreme nerdishness, and started serving their creation.
As it happens, there were more than a few boba virgins around. That fit perfectly with the Boba Guys’ attempt to tap into a crowd that doesn’t usually consume the drink. They’re not trying to preach to the converted, but rather to convert the uninitiated. A young lady approached the counter. Andrew handed her a clear plastic cup, stabbing the lid with an extra-wide straw. At the bottom of the cup, a bunch of dark brown tapioca pearls wobbled softly. She took a sip of the beige liquid, dragging one of the marble-sized pearls up her straw. When it reached her mouth, her eyes widened with surprise. Is it chewy? Is it gooey? Is it food? Or is it drink? Isn’t it wonderful?
The texture of tapioca pearls is much like Gummi Bears that are left in a bowl of water — chewy, with a little bite to them, and an outer surface that’s on the gooey side. The kind of pearls Boba Guys use is similar to what other boba shops use, but they say the secret is in the small-batch cooking, which they make as close to serving time as possible. And boys will be boys; the Boba Guys admit to referring to their tapioca as “grade A balls.” (Boba is also used as slang for boobs, duh.) Unlike the translucent tapioca pearls used for Asian desserts, those used for boba are dyed with brown sugar, which makes an excellent contrast with the lighter caramel color of milk tea.
I’ve had bubble tea before, and the Boba Guys’ tea definitely ranks highly. It was sweet, but not obscenely so. The milk was rich and fresh. And the balls, well, they were ballsy, with an excellent bite. Boba Guys’ milk tea — $4 a cup — comes in soy (American, Chinese, or a mix) or in local Straus half-and-half. It’s rich and delicious and well rounded in flavor and portion size. Really, you couldn’t ask for much more, but then Bin divulged a tease about developing a horchata-boba multi-culti crossover drink.
By the end of the event, the Boba Guys looked tired, happy, and relieved. They sold out, serving a couple hundred cups. The flow chart seemed to work, because even though they made each drink to order, no one had to wait for too long. Andrew and Bin are thinking of becoming regular pop-up purveyors. “We chose the Mission because there are adventurous eaters here, and these great Asian-centric restaurants like Ken Ken and Mission Chinese,” explains Andrew. “I think boba is a great pairing with them, instead of trying to serve it with burgers or something. This is a great place for us to start.” But as they develop this new venture, they assure me they’re still keeping their day jobs. “There’s not a lot of money in boba,” they laugh. Somewhere in the distance, I can hear their moms sigh in relief.
Boba Guys are operating as a pop-up for the time being. For a heads-up on their next appearance, follow them on bobaguys.com , on Facebook and on Twitter , or read their column about the business of boba at GOOD.is .
