Half & Half Tea House has risen above the fray of boba shops all over the San Gabriel Valley to become the premiere boba shop. As a testament to this fact, hordes of people wait in line for a chance to suck down the intensely sweet, intensely tea-y drinks.
H&H has a pretty typical menu of milk teas, slushies, and brick toast. They serve them in these funny fat cups. You can forget about getting a snug fit in your cup holder.
They offer two sizes, but you should forget about the large, as shown in this video.
The tea is really excellent. It’s real brewed tea — if you didn’t know, most cheap milk tea is just a powdered mix. This has a strong, bitter taste, which would be polarizing except for the fact that they dump tons of condensed milk in it. The result is an addictive sweet, creamy mix.
It’s too sweet for me, so I usually ask them to do it half-sweet, which thy are happy to do.
The boba is also great. Soft, chewy, and warm, it’s pretty great. The boba is a little sweetened, but not quite enough and lacking the deeper flavor of the ones at Chen San Ding in Taipei and Smiling Face.
What is not awesome is waiting in the tiny line for half an hour. Especially when you can walk down a hundred feet (at the Alhambra location) to Smiling Face and get better boba in tea that is not quite as good but close — but you’re in and out in two minutes. And you can get a Beard Papa’s cream puff.
Huh, seriously, why do I ever go to H&H?
Half & Half Tea House
141 N. Atlantic Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91754
626.872.0200
120 N San Gabriel Blvd,
San Gabriel, CA 91775
626.309.9387
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