You might be wondering, "what on earth is Cheese Tea?!" It's weird, obviously, since cheese and tea are quite different. Some of us drink tea hot, while some of us drink it cold. Some of us drink bubble teas, milk teas, tea lattes, red teas, green teas, black teas, and so on. Some of us eat cheese sometimes by itself, like as an hors d'oeuvre with crackers, while others might pair it with a glass of wine. Some of us eat cheese as an add-on to a burger, a pizza, a sandwich, a soup, etc, and some don't eat cheese at all. Cheese and tea basically don't belong together, but recently the two joined forces, had a baby and someone called it "Cheese Tea," a fresh tea topped with a creamy cheese.
Cheese. and. Tea. Just take a second and let it sink in.
Cheese Tea is a popular drink trend in Asia and is common in China, Taiwan and a few other countries. And now it has made it's way to the US! Although we consider Cheese and Tea their own categories, HappyLemon brought these two together and created these "Cheese Tea" drinks as part of their Rock Salted Cheese series.
HappyLemon, the franchise who started the phenomena, is a tea brand under Yummy Town Holding Corporation. The brand aims to "promote a new tea culture". Since tea is very common to the Chinese culture (and to many others as well), HappyLemon intends to expand this into the world by coming up with creative ways to indulge and enjoy teas in many other ways. Their goal is to create teas that young people would like to experience, and would be able to enjoy in a not-so-common way, which is why we're currently talking about a cheese and tea collaboration.
Okay, so picture your average bubble tea (without the bubbles), and now add a thick layer of marshmallow fluff to the top of it. That is what the drink looked like and what I thought of when I first laid eyes on it.
When I looked into it a little further, I learned that the "fluff" is actually what they call "salted cheese". The tea is a freshly brewed tea, which can be ordered either hot or cold in 4 flavors. You can choose from a selection of 3 teas: green, black, or milk tea (#SpoonTip: if you don't like tea flavors, you can get chocolate instead). Each of these special tea drinks are capped with the "salted cheese". The tea and the cheese are supposed to compliment each other, as the cheese is said to balance the bitterness of tea. From what I've heard, the cheese-cap is sweet, and tastes more like a cream. It's a cheese-cream and although it's called "cheese", it doesn't really taste like it.
You can get yourself one of these Cheese-Tea beauties from HappyLemon at Queens Crossing in Queens NY if you're feeling spontaneous, but the real question is: Would you try it, or would you rather try these 5 homemade bubble tea recipes instead?