I decided to try Taro tea at the Dragon Land Bakery.  I don’t know what it is about Taro.  I’m afraid it really might be as simple as the color.  But I felt the need to give it a shot beyond the root-canal version of the flavor as I endured it at CoCo a few weeks back.  So I bought a Taro Green Milk Tea.

And it was a whole new world.  Whereas CoCo’s tea was an assault, Dragon Land’s was almost velvety and just a little sweet, almost the taste equivalent of the texture you get when you let butter mints dissolve on your tongue, if that makes any sense.  And while CoCoc’s taro was a Lick-em-Sticks purple, this variant was a pale, pale version of the same.  An Easter purple, actually.

By the end of the glass, a distinctive green tea flavor emerged, which was an odd mix, but compelling.  I’d left the Yamamotoyama (such a fun word to say) tea bag in too long, so the sweet cream flavor was becoming cut with a harsh bite.  I also discovered a big glob of the black-speckled purple taro powder that had collected at the bottom and somehow not dissolved.  When I tasted it, it had the faintest trace of salt, similar to what you taste when you chug Gatorade.  Which makes me think, actually, that the tea is pretty much the same color as Gatorade’s Riptide Rush.  Or maybe it’s their Avalanche Ice.  Or Tsunami Surf.  Whatever.

From a visual standpoint, the tea and the taro didn’t want to mix at this point.  They curled around each other to make a bizarre camo pattern: South East Asian Green and Smiling Cartoon Asia purple.  The Ho Chi Minh Trail and My Neighbor Totoro.

And I kept snapping pictures, but I just couldn’t capture it.

So I captured the bakery’s array of vibrantly yellow baked goods instead.