The Alley Montreal – the current KING of the Bubble tea in town

I have tried them ALL (all the Bubble tea shops of Montreal)  and I came to the conclusion that there is a  KING in town (the Alley) as well as a QUEEN ( Xing Fu Tang ). IMHO, and for my taste, Xing Fu Tang has the edge, but the current post will focus on The Alley Montreal.

BTW, before I pursue with my review of The Alley Montreal, if that interests you, I did also a review of the Alley in NYC (click here, for that review).

So far, after years of tasting all their drinks, my favourite items at the Alley in Montreal are all the items of their “milk tea series” as well as the deerioca matcha (the item that’s on the right side, in the above picture) but drink it quickly as the natural bitterness of the matcha will eventually kick in…obviously), crunchy tiramisu milk tea (I still need the tiramisu to express more coffee flavour, though), crunchy cocoa milk tea and brown sugar ginger roasted milk tea.

My least favourite drinks: Deerioca ube puff (The picture of the current paragraph) the ube taro “purple yam” flavour not as expressive as I’d like), the modern deer (cold) which is a recent “special of the month” (the item in the middle on the picture of the previous paragraph ) on their menu that features plenty of enticing ingredients such as Peach oolong tea (a flavour I usually love), creamy snow velvet (whipped cream), chocolate drizzle and freeze-dried strawberries but that, for my taste, tasted plain/watery/ordinary even upon mixing all the ingredients.

I am also not a fan of their Deerioca Fever (Brown sugar tapioca served with milk), which, for me, is not as festive in mouth as I once anticipated, not great in my books, but it is a good enough milky drink which popularity I can somehow understand to some extent.

As always with the Alley, nothing is way too bold, nothing is way too rich, nothing is way too heavy. Everything is balanced, and I, as well as my stomach, are fine with that. And they have always been, for the most part, consistent in taste and quality. Creative as well (which obviously explains why they remain relevant after years of operation). Overall, the Alley continues to be one of my preferred bubble tea shops in Montreal. The Alley Montreal. 1256 Guy St, Montreal, Quebec H3H 2T4.

My conclusion: Allow me to fly back in my teenage years, for a second, and use terms such as  “that first crush” or “that first love”. The Alley was my first crush/first love, when it comes to the “bubble tea”. What that means is that …there will always be better, in life, obviously … and, as a matter of fact, in Montreal, I find Xing Fu Tang Montreal a tad better…but the Alley will always be that special one for me. Romantic feelings aside, The Alley is pulling off some of the better bubble teas in town. And that is all you need to know.

The Alley Bubble tea shop, New York, NY

The Alley is one of Taiwan’s most famous bubble tea (Boba drinks) shops. The ´titans’ of the bubble tea world have long been attracted by NYC with giants such as ‘Kung Fu Tea’ , ´Teado tea shop´, ´Coco’, ´Ten Ren’ as well as ‘Happy lemon’ and ´Gong cha’ having their own locations in the Big Apple. It was about time that the Alley joins this high level competition, which is what they ended up doing recently with the opening of their first shop in NYC. The Alley is already an International success story with effective or projected presence in many  of this globe’s major cities (Tokyo, Singapore, Melbourne, etc). The branch in NYC opened on Saturday Sept 7th 2019 in the NoHo neighbourhood. I went there on week 1 post opening.

I picked two of their signature items:

–Brown sugar Deeriocca milk tea featured soft and bouncy homemade brown sugar milk tea pearls. Deeriocca is the name they gave to those pearls. If I had to take a guess, I would say that it is with those pearls that the Alley truly stands out as the brown sugar flavour is, indeed, one crowd-pleasing flavour. I found this milk tea — which level of sweetness they do consider as «regular » —– to not have that much sugar. It was not bland, though. Just enough sugar to keep it on the enjoyable side of the spectrum. Also noteworthy was the refined creamy taste coming from the syrup. It is a chain operation, therefore it cannot  have the « exclusive » quality of the bubble Tea you can make yourself at home, but at what it is, it is certainly a Very good bubble Tea. 8/10

–Royal No 9 Milk tea
One of their most popular items according to their Facebook page. The house claims to use quality Black Assam tea leaves. This had a pleasant  fragrance coming from the tea element. Not as rich as the previous milk tea, by design, as it is just your basic milk and tea flavour, with, as it seems to be the consistent pattern  here, the sugar input kept in control – for the sweetness level, I basically took the regular one. This was not too sweet, therefore your best bet if you do not have a sweet tooth. Pleasant on the mouth, the delicate fine balance between the milk and the tea elements is technically without any flaw. 7/10

-The Missus ordered the snow lulu strawberry (strawberries, crushed ice in white peach oolong tea base , with a layer of snow velvet cream atop).  I tried a bit of it, and was disappointed: the one we tried had barely any fruity flavour coming from the strawberry. The missus  did not like it at all for the exact same reasons that  I have just raised. She railed  against the absence  of  the  usual fresh aftertaste that she came to expect from the better strawberry -flavoured bubble teas she had elsewhere and that is typical of most organic  strawberry-based liquid,  semi liquid or creamy concoctions. 5/10

The Alley enjoys a fame of the magnitude of the Apple’s Iphone when that device first came out and it is easy to see why: you feel the quality of its ingredients (as an example, the sugar cane syrup is made, onsite, with real sugar cane, which is why one does not get the artificial overwhelming sugar taste that comes from artificially sweetened products), a sense of refinement (well balanced flavours) as well as a well judged control of the sugar input. It is clear that their intent is not to excite you with bold /rich flavours, full-bodied textures, which makes it a product that is aligned with its time (a time of health consciousness). Blown away, I was not, but I did really enjoy the quality of the brown sugar Deerioca milk tea , which is easily one of my favourite milk teas. The Alley Addr: 68 Cooper square, New York, NY, 10003