Take a walk down memory lane with all our crazy food trends.
Yup, that’s right. Cheese and tea are now a thing.
Cheese Tea had made waves in China a few years ago but showed no signs of slowing down. Recently, it has finally hit closer to home, in Malaysia. The number of cups being sold in Malaysia is said to be on par with large Chinese cities like Shanghai which approximately 1,000 cheese teas are sold on a daily basis!
Cheese Tea consists of various tea bases such as fruit and green tea and topped off with a thick layer of frothy cream cheese. The cream cheese layer can be slightly sweet or lean towards the more salty side.
For Malaysia’s Regiustea, its cream cheese originates from Australia and it’s blended with condensed milk and other ingredients. The tea leaves are soaked in cold water for eight hours before the tea is ready to serve.
Queues in China have reportedly started even more than an hour before the stores have even opened.
The “pioneer” brands includes Heytea, Royaltea and Regiustea – its popularity has led to an outpour of copycats, all trying to get a cut of the Cheese Tea craze.
How To Drink It
The method of drinking it is similar to the Gong Cha Milk series whereby they discourage the usage of straws but rather simply drink from the cup to taste the complementing blend of cream and tea!
Cheese Tea was actually introduced to Singapore in 2012 by Happy Lemon, which is now permanently closed. There was no significant craze for the drink back, then but the possibility that the Cheese Tea would return to our shores is definitely not ruled out.
Other Crazy Queues In Singapore
Before you roll your eyes and say: “Who would ever queue for an hour just for a drink?!”
Singaporeans. Ohhhh yes, that’s us. We love to queue for anything and everything – from Hello Kitty dolls to food.
Let’s take a little look at some other recent food trends that drove Singaporeans absolutely nuts.
If you’ve been to the basement of Ion Orchard, you would probably remember the long snaking queues for Bake Cheese Tarts. When the tarts first hit our shores, queues were approximately two hours long but many were still willing to queue.
Another recent example was Chun Cui He which is an iconic milk tea brand in Taiwan. It was introduced in Singapore last year and many went absolutely crazy – a Facebook user went ahead to wipe out 80 bottles from the store.
While this example might seem a little extreme, other “stunts” that Singaporeans pulled includes creating a Facebook page to update the availability of the milk tea at the various 7-11 outlets.
7-11 subsequently limited each customer to 6 bottles each to make the drinks available to more. However, its recent introduction of the Rose Honey Milk Tea saw them being wiped out in less than 3 days since it arrived.
And ahh… who can ever forget the iconic green spoons? With multiple Llao Llao outlets popping up all over the city, this froyo sees much shorter queues in comparison to the two hour long ones when it first landed in Singapore.
So before you laugh at others, we Singaporeans do it too!
How long are you willing to queue for the Cheese Tea when it finally hits our shores?
