Dec 2019 – Yellywelly

Another day, another milk tea place in London. We’re enjoying milk/bubblet tea at the moment and we’ve sort of started a milk/bubble tea crawl of sorts. Alan saw posts on Instagram about Lucky Tea and the people reviewing the new tea place were more than positive, so we thought we’d try it. We managed to find Lucky Tea after a longish walk along Shaftesbury Avenue. Who knew Shaftesbury Avenue was that extensive? But then again, it’s like walking through Drury Lane, which is actually longer than I thought as well (we were off to find a cheesecake place…but that’s another story!

It wasn’t busy but, there was, effectively, just one seating are for a comfortable 2 and about 5 barstool seats. There were already a few people waiting for their orders but I don’t think people are expected to linger like we did. The staff were so smiley and friendly. It’s a good sign when they’re happy to talk about their products and the various promotions they had.

We decided on the smoothies because we really wanted the bottles that the smoothies came in (we’re coming back for the other one…hopefully they have them back in stock then!). Our friend, and resident milk tea addict, Yuki, chose a dragonfruit smoothie, Alan chose the strawberry and I chose mango (of course!). All our smoothies were topped with a cream cheese foam. Now you’ll probably think that sounds bizarre but strangely (or not so strangely) it absolutely worked! It tasted like you were drinking a slice of cheesecake! Those who know me well know that I LOVE cheesecake in all its different iterations. So this was an absolute treat. My favourite creamy dessert and my favourite fruit in the whole wide world (hey, I am Filipino!), what more could I want? I absolutely loved my mango smoothie! And because it was two of my favourite things, I really, REALLY wanted to have another one!

I’m so looking forward going back and trying their other offerings. They have a Yakult range and that’s got me all excited!

One of the rationalisations for going to Lucky Tea was that they had lovely packaging. Whilst I know you can probably buy these cutesy bottles online, it’s part of the fun of having milk tea! Here’s said Lucky Tea bottle rinsed again at home (thank you to the lovely girls at Lucky Tea who graciously rinsed out empty bottles after we hogged the seating area for longer than they’re probably used to!). I’m going back for the other bottle!

**P.S. The metal straw isn’t part of the purchase. I got this from my fabulous eco-warrior friend Kira, the beauty and brains behind Rinse + Repeat PH, purveyors of handmade shampoo and conditioner bars (when I say purveyors, I mean Kira herself makes the bars! How’s that for a super eco-warrior?).

We’ve walked past this little place on Rupert Street in Chinatown that specialises in Taiwanese dishes so many times for ages, either on our way to another restaurant in Chinatown or on our way to Yolkin (the cutesy shop that sells macaroon ice cream sandwiches, also found on Rupert Street). We’ve always been curious about the food and how good the food was because there was always a queue of people. But we never really had the opportunity to try the food, because we were always going for a meal somewhere else. But thankfully, last Saturday provided an excellent opportunity to stand in the queue and chance it!

We waited in the queue for about 20 minutes and looked at the menu that was very helpfully next to us, by the shop window, next to where we were queuing. We ordered a few dishes to have individually and thoroughly enjoyed our choices! For our individual meals Alan had deep fried salt & pepper pork chop with rice (which was served with preserved greens and braised pork), I had a very generous bowl of Sichuan dan-dan noodles that had an extremely tasty peanut sauce and the right amount of heat and spice and Yuki had the Old Tree thin noodles soup with oysters which as deceptively small but was incredibly filling! We also ordered a side of Taiwanese style salt and pepper crispy squid which sooooooooo good! It had the right amount of plum favouring sprinkled on it too!

The space has maybe 20-30 seats but always seems packed to the rafters. So if you’re aiming to go and try the food, be prepared to wait a little. It’s a fairly good sign that a lot of their diners look Taiwanese, and that they all seem willing to wait in the cold for their chance to be seated. To me that means the food is good enough to queue and wait for, and it was a taste of home away from home.

I so wish I could’ve been to Taiwan, to try the restaurant food, and the street food and the fabulous snacks. However, I’m more than happy to trust the opinions of all the customers queuing up by OTDB. There is something infinitely comforting about the small space with the assortment of tables all crammed to maximise possible revenue. It reminded me of the little eateries (which we called carinderia in Filipino) which my friends and I used to go to to eat cheap but delicious food.

The food at OTDB is more than just cheap and cheerful though. It is yummy and ultimately comforting. I suppose to me it is such a comfort because the food traditions in Asia, especially around Southeast Asia are very similar to what their neighbours are eating. Also, everything is relatively…incestuous for a lack of a better word. Everyone has a version of a dish that is similar to something from another country.

Apart from the culturally similar flavours, I absolutely enjoyed the numbing heat of the Sichuan dan-dan noodles. I’ve had a couple of other versions of it, and I think this is, by far, my favourite version of the spicy stringed yumminess. I think the addition of the peanut flavour provides a different yumminess to the numbing heat of the noodles. My tolerance for spicy food has definitely waned a lot, because Alan and I stopped actually eating hot food. I’ve got a spicy new favourite now though…and I think I’m going to start eating a lot of spicy noodles again!