Portland’s best boba tea shop, 5 Flavor Cafe is a ‘business of love’ - OregonLive

takanadalagi.blogspot.com

Steve and Vy Chao spent months traveling around Asia after retiring from careers in the tech industry.

When they returned to the United States, the two noticed that many of the foods and flavors they missed “didn’t exist” in the Portland metropolitan area. So they set off to recreate them here.

In February 2018, the Chaos opened 5 Flavor Cafe just south of Washington County’s Oak Hills neighborhood. In addition to a unique drink menu, the cafe also serves popcorn chicken and various treats like taiyaki — custard-filled, fish-shaped pastries — and mochi muffins made at the couple’s year-old business, DOJA Tea Lounge in Tualatin.

The two met on business trips to Seoul, where they discovered omija berry tea at a traditional tea house. Known as the “five-flavor berry,” omija is said to have all five flavors: salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and bitter. Tea-drinking soon led to romance and eventually 5 Flavor Cafe, where the omija berry is showcased in the cafe’s logo and in the bright crimson drink “Love Potion #5.”

Such meticulous attention to detail makes 5 Flavor Cafe our pick for Portland’s best boba shop.

Though neither had professional culinary experience, the Chaos curated a menu to match their taste buds, a process that involved tasting eight or nine Sri Lankan ceylon black teas just to get one component in their House Milk tea right and trying more than a dozen boba suppliers.

“Some people say anal, some people say extreme, some people say picky,” said Steve, 47. “We end up taking the time to figure it out, we’ve done a lot of stuff the hard way — trial and error and error and error.”

The Chaos created an import company to ensure they can get the teas and supplies they need from around the world. Their matcha? It’s from a small, all-natural farm in the southern Japanese prefecture of Kagoshima that doesn’t export much of its product. But they wanted it because of its grassy, umami flavor that finishes without bitterness or graininess, he said.

Every cup of tea is brewed to order — made possible by their teapresso machine, which allows them to get a cup of tea in 32 seconds instead of the normal 3.5 minutes it takes to steep a tea.

Service at 5 Flavor Cafe is significantly slower than a chain store like Sharetea, Steve said, but the additional time and additional processes is worth it to “extract that extra flavor.”

5 Flavor Cafe’s business model is inspired by San Francisco chain Boba Guys, focusing on “high quality ingredients and high quality process control” to make the exact same cup of tea over and over again, Steve said.

Pre-concocted menu items are simply a starting point for 5 Flavor Cafe’s complex levels of customization. Here, boba fans can specify tea strength, sweetness levels and tea bases, choosing among 19 teas, various milk options and 12 toppings.

Boba is imported directly from their Taiwan supplier and runs slightly larger than average. Each batch is soaked in honey longan syrup, Steve said, and they never keep a batch more than two hours.

Several of their toppings are made in-house. The team developed a matcha pudding recipe with a mix that was chosen after tasting seven or eight kinds. The aiyu jelly is made from seeds of the creeping fig found in Taiwan and other East Asian countries. Extracting the gel involves wrapping the seeds in a mesh bag and rubbing it vigorously under cold water until it releases gelatin that then sets in the fridge. The jelly has a barely-there texture and an herbal taste similar to chrysanthemum flower.

One might wonder how 5 Flavor Cafe can afford to offer this level of culinary precision in a boba shop. Can the average person taste the difference between boba suppliers?

“We’re a business of love rather than to make money,” Steve said. “We have the privilege and opportunity to make decisions that other people aren’t able to. I don’t want to lose money but I don’t need to make a lot.”

And, Steve added, his two kids — ages 1 and 3 — can already taste the difference between their boba and other establishments’. “They’ve become “boba snobs,” he said.

Details:

5 Flavor Cafe, Noon to 8 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 10 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 14740 N.W. Cornell Road #160; 971-228-8430; 5flavorcafe.com

DOJA Tea Lounge, focused on brewed tea and desserts, 11:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 18674 S.W. Boones Ferry Road, Tualatin.

-- Jaimie Ding

jding@oregonian.com; 503-221-4395; @j_dingdingding

Let's block ads! (Why?)

"cafe" - Google News
April 15, 2021 at 09:20PM
https://ift.tt/2OTZHdz

Portland’s best boba tea shop, 5 Flavor Cafe is a ‘business of love’ - OregonLive
"cafe" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2FkbMR3
https://ift.tt/3c4yPxW