Boba Loca

Tea Rush
2759 S. Diamond Bar Blvd.
Diamond Bar, CA 91765
(909) 598-5190

Boba and tea shops are everywhere. You can find them at nearly every shopping plaza in the greater Los Angeles area. They've become the Asian Starbucks, a hangout spot for local teenagers to text each other on their Sidekicks about crappy music and who's taking who to the prom. There's so many to choose from: Ten Ren's, Quickly's, Lollicup, Tea Zone, Tealicious, Tapioca Express. But despite all this variety in name, they all taste alike and offer the same menu of greasy pork chops and unpredictably spicy popcorn chicken (where "medium" could mean either bland or set your tongue on fire). I went on a quest to find a tea house that offered high quality drinks and a unique menu. This quest lasted less than a week, because I found said place in my own hometown of Diamond Bar.

Tea Rush is located in the brand spanking new Super H Mart plaza, right next to the hip yogurt store Cherry On Top. It's a short walking distance from the high school, so the normally dead hours of 3-5 pm in the restaurant world are the rush hours for Tea Rush. The atmosphere is different from your typical cold and brightly lit boba shop. When you enter, you feel surrounded by a comforting warmth complimented by the dark mahogany furniture and the scent of incense burning in the corner. They always leave the door open to allow a gentle breeze to brush by. The baristas and cooks are friendly and willing to help you find the perfect drink.

The drinks are carefully handcrafted and named after different birthstones like "Ruby" and "Sapphire". Many of their creations include soy creamer, which balances out the strong fruit taste in the drinks and goes perfectly with boba. My personal favorites are "Topaz" (green tea, peach, and soy creamer) and "Amethyst" (black tea, blueberry, and soy creamer). They also offer the option of creating your own drink from their variety of teas (green, black, rose vanilla, masala chai, or herb chai) and fruit flavors (strawberry, blueberry, peach, pineapple, passion fruit, honey, among many others).

What truly amazed me about Tea Rush was their food menu, which offered a great variety of delicious and healthy meals such as ginger chicken salad, shrimp rice bowls (with brown rice available as an option), miso soup, even dim sum! I just had to try one of the dim sum items, so I got shrimp potstickers. I was blown away: the dough was soft and fluffy, not at all greasy, and the filling was so full of flavor I barely used any chili sauce. No more popcorn chicken for me! (Although they do have that too.)

Everything at Tea Rush runs at the same price as any other boba shop, so you can easily get a great meal and drink for under $10. And for dessert, you can just stroll next door to the fabulous Cherry On Top...but I'll save that for another blog.