Urban Ritual

Urban Ritual is a tea/coffee shop with locations in San Francisco, San Mateo, and San Jose.  I've been aware of the business for a few years, drawn in by some of their more unique bubble tea adjacent drinks (like the mango sticky rice drink with rice milk and coconut milk, the black sesame rice ball drink with drinkable mochi in it, another with pandan & corn milk (!), and others with brûlée of all sorts).  They do of course make more traditional tea drinks, for the less adventurous.  

I still haven't been to one of their shops, but I recently attended an event that had drinks catered from Urban Ritual, and I was thrilled to get my top pick of drink from the lineup.  I loved my drink, and now do intend to make a proper visit!

Feed Me Ube! (Rice Milk, Add boba). $7 + $0.75. 

"Ube Creme brûlée, taro chunks, coconut milk, and a choice of rice milk or whole milk."

Oh be still my heart!  Ube AND taro AND creme brûlée, all in one creation?  I have dedicated labels on my blog for each of those because I adore them, so this was a trifecta of awesome in my mind.  I opted for the rice milk version.

For mix-ins, Urban Ritual offers standard honey boba or crystal boba, lychee, grass, or osmanthus tea jellies, aloe vera, mochi, and creme brûlée pudding.  I normally would have picked crystal boba or the mochi perhaps, but our drinks were pre-designed by the event hosts to use standard boba, which I was happy enough with.

There is no need to draw this out further.  This.  Was.  Glorious.  I had high hopes, and it exceeded them.  The rice milk was the perfect backdrop for it, very mild, light horchata vibes.  There was no option to modify the sweetness, but it didn't need modifying.  The base was not very sweet, but just sweet enough to be more enjoyable than plain milk.  The coconut milk was a minimal component, just there to round everything out.  So, the top 50%, actually just pretty enjoyable rice/coconut milk.  But of course, the rest of the creation is where it gets more interesting.

At the base of the cup was the standard boba.  They were the right kind of soft, no hard centers. Some were clumped together, but I blame that on the fact that we had a huge delivery order, so likely less freshly made than if I had gotten it as an individual at the store.  The boba were fine, but not actually needed in this drink.  I'd leave them out in the future (or, try the mochi or lychee jellies most likely).

Above that is where things got really special.  The mashed taro (not very visible here, but it was a less vibrant purple) and the ube creme brûlée.  The taro was exactly what I expected from decent fresh mashed taro.  I quite enjoyed it, and it went really nicely with the rice milk.  I would have been happy enough with this drink at this point, just a taro rice milk/coconut milk boba, and given it a nice ****.  But then there was the ube creme brûlée, and ZOMG, that stuff was magic.  Glory.

The ube creme brûlée managed to have incredible creme brûlée flavor, as in, I swear I could taste the sweetness from the caramelized top, and a lovely custard that wasn't too eggy, AND it had very strong ube flavor, making it sorta like a very sophisticated creme brûlée, AND it had an incredible consistency, soft and actually still in chunks, so you could suck it up with the wide boba straw, or use a spoon to pluck it out and enjoy that way.  It was incredible, and I've really never had anything like it before.  I would love to be able to just order a dish of that!  ***** that stuff, really.

So overall, all very good components, that went well together, and introduced me to the concepts of both ube creme brûlée and creme brûlée hunks in a bubble tea drink (I've had pudding bits before, but they weren't quite like this) ... just a winning creation all around, and I enjoyed every sip/bite.  I'd gladly get it again.  Very high ****+.