Love at first Sip

My favorite milk tea brand was one of the products pulled out from supermarket shelves. This was after that most recent scandal about imported beverages with DEHP, a chemical additive used to make plastic soft and pliable. But although the choice to forgo that particular milk tea brand forever has been easy, I have since been on the lookout for safer local alternatives that are refreshing and tasty.

A promising discovery is Sip at the ground floor of Pearl Plaza in Ortigas City. The milk tea shop is the latest venture of young Filipino entrepreneur Jonathan Kui, who believes that “good milk teas should taste both like milk and tea. There should be a harmonious blend between the two.”

How can this be achieved? “We treat tea in the proper manner,” explains Jonathan. “We steep our teas at the optimal temperature and the optimal amount of time. We do not use coffee machines, espresso machines, or powder. Why? Because we feel that people do not deserve anything but the best. Coffee and tea are not the same thing and to treat them the same way is simply a sin.”

He continues, “Tea takes time to get its delicate sweetness out, it is not supposed to be bitter at all. If the tea tastes bitter then it’s one of two things: it is either really bad, cheap tea, or they burnt it (or it could be both). Aside from the fact that we treat tea properly because you can’t have great milk tea without great tea to begin with, we look for harmony in our flavors. We basically did our best to master the taste that we needed.” Apart from the basic milk tea, choices include green milk tea, caramel, mango, strawberry, hazelnut and honey.

Honeycomb waffles: Crisp outside, soft and fluffy inside

However, should one prefer to have tea without milk, a wide selection that includes strawberry, raspberry, mango, lychee and other flavors is available, The choice also includes unusual tea variants like lemon or lychee Yakult and wintermelon.

Alternatively, there are green, black, mango and strawberry “Chappuccinos.” To make it even more special, one can add  toppings (sago, lychee nata, pineapple nata, green apple nata, caramel jelly, white jelly, triple jelly, coffee jelly, egg pudding, aloe vera, strawberry sago, passionfruit sago, citrus, and grass jelly.) One can also choose the sweetness levels.

“After trying the milk teas while traveling abroad, we felt that the local milk teas didn’t hold well against them,” says Jonathan. “We thought that we all deserve something better locally and set out to create a better milk tea.”

Prices range from P75 to P100 and best-sellers at Sip are milk tea, passion fruit tea, mango tea, caramel milk tea, chocolate milk tea, roasted lemon bush, and the Chappuccinos. They also make a mean chicken chop.

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Sip is at the ground floor of Pearl Plaza, and will open in Robinsons Galleria real soon. Store hours are from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays. Log on to www.idloveasip.com.