The 9 Best Boba Shops In Houston - Houston - The Infatuation (2024)

photo credit: Quit Nguyen

Boba tea lands somewhere between a fun caffeine boost and a liquid dessert—and can be found all over the city. With so much great boba in Houston, the hardest part is picking which shop to visit. Here are our favorite places to channel your inner fruit tea warrior or maximize the amount of delicious chewy bits that can be put into your drink.

THE SPOTS

Tiger Sugar has the best brown sugar milk tea in the city. Each one comes decorated with “tiger stripes”—caramelized brown sugar syrup drizzled inside of the cup— and specific mixing instructions. After giving your drink the recommended 15 shakes, the brown sugar concoction will taste like cinnamon toast crunch made its way into your tea. Try it with cream (that makes the drink taste a little frothier), and maybe snap a selfie with the life-sized stuffed tiger that we’re convinced holds all the secrets to the shop.

For a quick, fully customizable bubble tea fix, go to Star Snow Ice. Everything here is utilitarian, delicious, and cheaper than other boba spots (around $4 per drink). The original location—the second one is in the corner of Dun Huang plaza—has been serving boba tea and flavored shaved ice in Chinatown for over 20 years. With classic flavors from the standard jasmine milk tea to honeydew tea with rainbow jelly, you can get just about any kind of bubble tea combination under the sun.

For the best milk foam in Chinatown, stop into Gong Cha. The slightly salted cream has a perfectly smooth texture to top your favorite tea, like a baked alaska in a cup. Our go-to is the milk foam green tea for a deep earthy sip, and add their bouncy boba—it has the right Q (chew is perfect). But for some fun and a little snack, try the Earl Grey milk tea with 3 J’s—pearls, herbal jelly and pudding jelly, which gives you a cup full of dessert after your drink is finished.

Yumcha feels like the sort of boba tea shop you’d see in a coming-of-age movie. It serves as an informal study hall for high school students to work through chemistry problems while sipping a brown sugar milk tea with tapioca pearls. For the summer, get a sparkling seltzer flavored like pineapple, guava, or whatever tropical fruit is in rotation and grab a container of macarons or a pastry from the display case if you plan on studying (or pretending to study).

We don’t know what Mr. Wish hopes for, but we’d guess it’s for everyone to drink more fruit. Like one of the bright, and not-too-sweet diced fruit teas with fresh lychee pulp or kumquat green tea with tapioca herbal aiyu jelly drinks served at this cafe in Chinatown. Each one tastes refreshing, especially on a hot day—so, almost every day in Houston. You can get a classic milk tea here, but ordering that while standing next to a giant fruit mural seems, well, silly. And if you need a sweet snack, add on the creamy warm custard-stuffed waffles shaped like paw prints.

At Hella Bubble, efficiency is the top priority. There are two Houston locations, but the River Oaks shop will have your drinks ready by the time you finish ordering. Their thai tea is potent enough to make any socialite ready to tackle a day of baccarat lamp shopping. And while it may not be the fanciest boba tea spot, it serves bouncy tapioca pearls that taste like they were made in the last 30 minutes, every time.

For tapioca purists, there is Xing Fu Tang. The boba is made by hand, tossed into a warm copper pot constantly caramelizing the brown sugar, and then doled out drink-by-drink right in front of you. You might even want to order a second drink just to watch the procession of beautiful silken, bronze sugar-coated tapioca pearls again. Along with multiple versions of brown sugar milk tea—including one with milk tea-flavored soft serve we have to order every time—Xing Fu Tang also makes seasonal drinks with giant jelly boba, strawberry milk, and sparkling sodas.

At Tea Talk, you can order a bubble tea and be back in your car in under 10 minutes, but the Chinatown cafe gives you plenty of reasons to stay longer. Relax on their comfy blue couch and contemplate how the thai milk tea tastes so concentrated. Bring a group of friends and get a little too engaged in a board game you brought from home, and if you need some solitude, there’s a small outdoor seating area where it’ll be you, your tea, and some bouncy pearls.

Tea Top is a quieter outpost in Chinatown’s Don Huang Plaza, made for the utilitarian bubble tea drinker. Walk in and glance at the menu, if you’d like, or just go straight for an organic taro milk tea that’s textured but not gritty. Keep this place in your back pocket for a boba tea stop that won’t be jam-packed during peak hours.