Bubble tea & shaved ice desserts
Bubble tea comes out of South East Asia. It's particularly popular in Vietnam. Less like tea than a liquid tapioca pudding, it has become increasingly available around the area. You pick a flavored milky tea, from something fruity to vanilla (even coffee, despite the name) and you get a big plastic cup with huge plastic straw through which to suck up the almost Whoppers sized squishy beads.
It can be found at the pastry shops in the Eden Center Mall on Route 50 and Lee Highway.
Maria's Bakery is one of a Hong Kong chain, serving bubble tea to go with their savory buns and fanciful cakes, at 1701B3 Rockville Pike, 301 984 2228. It supplies a number of local Asian markets with their baked goods. One eatWashingtonian says their raisin buns are as light as a feather.
Closer in, it's at Wok & Roll, 604 H St NW and Ten Ren, 7418 Baltimore Ave, College Park. The ice cream shop in the Wintergreen Plaza, north on the Rockville Pike announces on its windows that it sells tapioca tea.
And there is a stall serving it in the food court in Westfield Mall on Democracy Blvd in Bethesda.
For a list of places serving bubble tea (and of traditional tea rooms locally and nationally), log onto http://www.catteacorner.com.
Cool down after a hot soup with an Asian iced dessert of shaved ice topped with anything from red bean sauce, condensed milk, fresh fruit cubes, rice cake, syrups and odd jams. Bakeries at the Eden Center make them while you wait, as do Le Matin de Paris Bakery, 4217 Annandale Center Dr, Annandale, 703 914 0088, and the Korean Bakery, 4217 John Marr Dr, Annandale, 703 642 0404.