Location: 348 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: https://toronto.tigersugar.com/

What if you had bubble tea, but without the tea?  That’s not a question I would have thought to ask, but it turns out that the answer is seriously delicious.

Tiger Sugar serves a drink called brown sugar boba milk, and yeah — it’s basically bubble tea without the tea.  It’s sweet, creamy, and amazing.  I actually tried Tiger Sugar on a recent trip to Taiwan, and I found it so delicious that I thought “I should bring this to Canada!  I’ll be rich!”

I have zero desire to run a bubble tea shop, but I was so confident that this would be a hit in Toronto that I actually reached out to the company to see if franchising was a possibility (alas, I was too late).

And, so far at least, I was right.  Tiger Sugar opened a location downtown about a month ago, and on a recent visit (during the afternoon in the middle of the week, no less), the place was absolutely packed.

Their flagship drink is brown sugar boba milk with cream mousse, which is just as rich as it sounds.  The brown sugar gives it a nice depth of flavour that helps it not feel too sweet, despite the fact that it’s incredibly sweet.  The combo of the milk and the cream mousse is rich and satisfying.  And the tapioca balls are chewy, sweet, and tasty.

It’s definitely not something to order if you just want to quench your thirst — it’s a full-blown dessert, and it’s surprisingly heavy — but it’s so good.