Day 18: Bubble Tea and hangouts

Jacqui and Water.. Two things that have always gone together amazing great. Rochester is full of water. Between the Erie Canal, Genessee river, the nearby Finger Lakes etc; this place is a water heaven. It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise then that I spend a great deal of time around places that have view of the water. Now, add in some Asian cuisine and Jacqui becomes the happiest person.

My lunch place today is iTasteTea (http://www.itastea.com/) in the Corn Hill Landing Section of the city. In all honesty, if I had actually made a real plan; this would have been another tea house. However, like most of my seemingly favorite niche places in Rochester, KC Tea and Noodles closed about 3 months ago. Very sad, as I was completely addicted to their Bubble Teas. So my search for a new bubble tea place began and I came across iTasteTea on RocWiki.

Bubble Tea 1 of the day: Apple Bubble tea. Made with Milk, pureed apples, honey, green tea and rice beads.

This is been on my list of "I want to go.." for a while. It bills itself as Asian Fusion but the menu seems more like Traditional Chinese; mostly broth and cold noodle dishes. Every meal comes with 4 pot stickers either veggie or pork/shrimp (not pictured).  According to the chef everything is homemade and organic. So I could almost rationalize the $8.75 for a meal.

Spicy Chicken Noodle.

I ordered the Spicy Chicken Noodles. It is a broth based noodle dish. I like the way the chef left the veggie raw for a nice crunch along with the soft noodles and the chicken.  I ordered it medium and it had that nice kick without being too spicy (which means next time, I will order it hot). The broth itself is sorta the star here, nice chicken flavor balanced with ginger and other traditional Chinese flavors. The smell.. amazing.

As I was sitting there, the chef came over to my stool and the table behind me with a new Pur tea he had just gotten in. He was sampling it, so I got that tea for free. It was a Chinese black tea. Had an amazing woodsy smell and lite taste. Decent caffeine though, I am still wired.

Another nice thing, I was able to sit there with my laptop thanks to the free wi-fi. The atmosphere made it really nice to do work in. I think I might have found a replacement for my coffee house situation.

I leave you with bubble tea 2 of the day: Mango..

Bubble Tea 2: Mango bubble tea. He added some coconut to give it some additional texture.