The Alley is a Taiwanese bubble tea chain known for its for freshly handcrafted tapioca – aka deerioca (a play on the word tapioca and their deer logo). They are opening their first Vancouver location this Saturday (April 27).
The Alley creates its own sugar cane syrup and serves up an elevated menu of original brewed teas (imported from Taiwan), milk teas, and fruit juice teas. The full menu can be found here.
To celebrate their grand opening they will be giving the first 100 patrons who walk through the doors after 3 pm a free bubble tea! They will be also having 15% off select drinks.
I was invited to check out a selection of their drinks before the grand opening and I would highly recommend you check this place out. The hype is deserved.
Aurora Series (光飲系列)
This drink is so beautiful with the contrasting orange and blue colours. I couldn’t taste the any Jasmine green tea in this drink. It tastes like mango juice!
This drink is hands down the most aesthetic drink I’ve ever held. The colours work so well together and the ingredients are so unique. The apple vinegar adds a little sour taste that works well with the sweet grape slush. It was a very refreshing drink. Of the two drinks I would recommend this one!
Brown Sugar Deerioca (黑糖鹿丸系列)
This is one of their signature drinks and I ordered it with soy milk. I really like that a lot of newer bubble tea chains are offering a soy milk option. The pearls here were really chewy and had a strong brown sugar taste. Unlike other bubble tea places they recommend you stir it a little bit before drinking. Don’t do what I did and shake it vigorously.
This is the Matcha version of their signature brown sugar drink and it was the least sweet of all the drinks that I tried. You can adjust sugar and ice levels for most drinks, but I wanted to try all the drinks without changing them to see what they are intended to taste like. The matcha flavour was very prominent, so the brown sugar pearl flavour was a lot less pronounced in this drink.
Overall I really enjoyed the drinks here. I think the hype is deserved and I anticipate the lines for this bubble tea store will be pretty crazy when they first open. But definitely try to check them out once the craze dies down.