It’s Tea, But There’s Cheese Placed On Top Of It, And You Drink It [PIC]
It’s tea, but it has cheese on top, and you can actually get it here in Sacramento (Elk Grove) starting this weekend.
By nowproducerdave on September 26, 2018
Would you try a “cheese tea?” It’s a regular tea drink, but they’re putting cheese on top. Not like cheddar or provolone, of course, but a salted cheese. It’s like a cheesecake or crème brûlée, they say. Read on.
Like a lot of interesting food trends, cheese tea started out in some Asian countries. It “exploded in popularity,” and found its way over here to the states. There’s even a new shop opening in Elk Grove that promises to bring cheese tea to the Sacramento area this weekend. This is not an ad, by the way, it just so happened to be opening this week. The cheese-tea is regular tea, like said above, but with a fluffy sort of “cheese topping” that isn’t “too heavy.” You can throw it on any tea you want – green, black, matcha… The topping they add is a “frothy” mixture of milk and cream cheese. See – it’s pretty lightweight. It’s not like biting into a block of sharp cheddar and forcing down a gulp of chai at the same time. The best way to drink it seems to be the regular sips-from-the-cup method.
The drink, originally called “zhī shì chá,” comes from one tea shop in particular, based in Taiwan and China. It sort of grew across most Asian countries after that, and they’re having a hard time keeping all the ingredients in stock over there. Shops have sold about 3,000 cheese-teas per day. When they debut a new flavor, people line up out the door and around the corner to try it out. One shop reportedly had a 7-hour wait. That’s a long line; I’d rather sit at the DMV. Average shops here in the states sell regular coffee drinks somewhere between 2-300 per day. Check out more information on the tea-cheese drink here.