The basic purpose of food is to provide sustenance; the body needs it to function. Today, food serves many other purposes: social activity, hobby, art. Innovation with regards to food has been stupendous, as the variety of techniques used to render raw materials into a meal have expanded to add textures, bring out flavour combinations and create an experience that we wouldn’t otherwise have if our civilisations were still hunting and gathering.

The basic purpose of drink is to hydrate. Today, drink serves many other purposes: social lubricant, buzz provider, warm comfort. Some drinks – Irish coffee, for example – can serve more purposes than one. The variety of techniques used to render drinks, though, is limited. True, one can argue for hours how to make a great cup of coffee or hot chocolate. And, of course, tomes and tomes and tomes (even by Playboy) have been written on how to mix a perfect cocktail.

But, comparatively speaking, texture and flavour combinations in most beverages, especially the non-alcoholic variety, are not given nearly as much attention as is paid to food. For example, one infamous cutting-edge restaurant in Spain, El Bulli, uses flavoured foams to create complementary and sometimes mad flavours on the plate. Innovation in drink technique, on the other hand, rarely goes beyond finding a new way to steam milk – in fact, the craziest thing to come out of the beverage field in the past century may have been the addition of fizz to sugared water.

Perhaps that’s why pearl milk tea (also known as bubble tea, or more colourfully as boba) is such a novelty to people who try it at first. To newbies, it doesn’t make sense to chew something when you’re trying to drink it. In Taiwan, however, these beverages are taken rather seriously. In an American convenience store, I think the most shelf space is given to potato chips. Step into a 7-11 in Taipei, and you’ll find that the whole back row is filled with drinks: teas, milk teas, juices, canned coffees, and so on, in addition to the usual sodas.

Pearl milk tea is just the beginning, a tease of the potential experience to be had in a beverage. At 50 Lan, a beverage chain with stands throughout Taipei, the possibilities are staggering. The menu of teetotaller-friendly drinks includes freshly-brewed teas – oolong, green, jasmine, and so on – that can be combined with a variety of different flavours, including fresh milk, almond milk, ginger, coffee, grapefruit juice, yoghurt, and so on. On top of that, you can ask for your exact preference of sugar and ice levels.

But the most interesting aspect of drinks at 50 Lan is their texture. You can choose from quite a few solid or semi-solid items to mix into your customised liquid base, such as small pearls (made of starch), grass jelly (a black jello), or pudding. Then, the guy behind the counter will put the drink into a machine that will shake it vigorously or slowly, depending on the level of froth that is desired on the drink. Finally, the whole concoction is poured into a plastic cup and vacuum sealed by another robotic device.

It’s amazingly refreshing and curiously addicting stuff. The texture of the different jellos in the drinks makes it more fulfilling and adds flavours to the drink without blending things in directly. Lemon jelly complements the more acidic teas (such as passionfruit), grass jelly goes rather well with the milky teas, and pearls taste good with everything. What’s more, it’s an everyday habit. Youngish guys hop off their motorbike to pick up a kumquat lemon jello drink before hopping back on and weaving back into the city traffic. Maybe they stop to smoke a cigarette while drinking the fruity concoction. Moms dragging their children to test prep class pick up a yoghurt green tea with some pearls to sweeten the long trip there.

Granted, these texture innovations were not invented by the store, but by street vendors who mixed snack ingredients with popular beverages. Still, you could say that these drinks vendors in Taipei beat out the cocktail kings in the big city New York bars in terms of creativity, as they’ve found a way to combine flavours without mixing them, a not-so-easy feat in the liquid medium. With that kind of imagination, who knows how far realm of beverage making will go? Those looking to push the boundary might do well to stop by a 50 Lan stand in Taipei.

50 Lan
No. 102-1 HuaiNing St.
886-2-2370-4780
Branches throughout Taipei, Taiwan

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:05 am and is filed under Taipei, travel.