Cuttlefish balls and piggy buns 🍽
Bubbles N' Bites shows a lot of personality with its Vietnamese boba and snacks menu
I figured I’d get your attention with the headline above. Bubbles N’ Bites sure had my attention as I stood below their digital menus on a recent Friday night, studying the multitude of options.
I confess, I tend to stress, almost freeze up when it comes to building a bubble tea drink and dialing it in to my mood in a moment. The problem with liking just about everything is that I like just about everything. So deciding between a milk tea or fruit tea or smoothie or “slush” or “mochablast” or lemonade or latte thingy and then sorting some 38 toppings — well, you see my point. (“Help me Jesus. Help me Jewish God…. Help me Tom Cruise!”)
Alright, alright, I’m clearly being melodramatic. There really shouldn’t be any worry in ordering a colorful, festive drink where you kinda can’t really mess up too bad. I mean, unless you place rainbow jelly and green apple popping boba with grass jelly in a kumquat slush with a salted cheese foam cap. Right? I mean, everyone knows that, right? (Actually that sounds pretty good. I just made it up.)
Backing up: Bubbles N’ Bites opened in October, 2022, at the odd intersection of Barnes Road and Austin Bluffs Parkway, next to Doherty High School. That’s a key detail, as students compose a big part of the clientele during both lunch hours and after hours (the place stays open until 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 9 p.m. weeknights). They flood in, as we witnessed, in pairs or couples of couples, and hop on the foosball table or Pac-Man console, and aren’t shy with their volume. At one point, as third-party delivery drivers queue alongside customers in line, music videos blare from a central TV, blenders roar and voices bounce off every hard surface, there’s such a cacophony that I write down the words “chaos juice” in my notes. (Hmmm … I wonder what toppings that would pair well with?)
Proprietor Tina Nguyen, according to a note on the biz’s website, was one of the original boba shop owners in the area with a former business. I call to inquire more details after my visit, and a friendly employee named Naven Morgan says he’s unsure of that prior biz’s name, but he believes it was part of a Vietnamese restaurant. He says the owner’s mother, who they all affectionately call Grandma (he’s unsure her full name), is the real “Wonder Woman” on site, making most all of the drinks and food.
I should mention there’s also other games available, a mini library of random books for all ages, pretty plant racks and a retail shelf with stuffed animals that range from pink pigs sipping brown boba to anthropomorphic boba cups to oversized plush things (I’m not even sure what animal, if derived from nature) and some little bird creatures with side satchels and spectacles. (Take that ye' boring teddy bears of the land.)
Oh, and Bubbles N’ Bites promotes the use of Kangen water (reportedly antioxidant, alkaline, purified water) on site and they talk up “safe, natural and hygienic ingredients.” If you can be convinced that anything with as much sugar as the typical boba drink can be good for you, then the drink you should order is the Beauty Tea, listed on the menu as good for everything from anti-aging, liver detoxification and weight loss to skin improvement, mental alertness and enhanced memory. (All that for $6.99, hoo boy.)
I get one to try it and am quickly on my phone to research some of its ingredients. The chia seeds, red (Chinese) dates and goji berries I’m good on. But the peach resin, snow fungus and snow swallow have me curious.
The first is 1) not a boutique marijuana strain and 2) actually sap from a peach tree that’s collagen rich. The snow fungus apparently grows in the tropics and is used in Chinese medicine, and when I isolate some in a sip I notice its unusual gelatinous crunch and mild flavor that makes me think of a coconut-infused kelp. And lastly, the snow swallow is … well …. complicated. Read for yourself: “Natural Wild Tragacanth Gum is a plant pith secretion of the genus Panzhihua. It is called "Snow Swallow" because it is similar to the bird's nest.”
Prediction: That is the first and last time I’ll use the words “Tragacanth” and “Panzhihua” in a writeup. And damned if I’ll try my best to avoid “secretion” too. (Like, where would I anyway? … ahem … “the donut had a bright raspberry filling secretion — yum!”)
But if it’s not a blend of superfoods, tree blood, fungus and substance I still don’t quite comprehend that you’re seeking in your bubble tea experience, then order something else. Duh.
From the aforementioned plethora of options I manage to blurt out “wintermelon latte” during my momentary mental breakdown and I do put a salted cheese foam cap on it even though I totally forget to order any actual boba pearls for it. I remember liking the salted cheese from my first experience with it back at Pho Buddy several years ago. Honeydew-like wintermelon flavor always pleases, kind of like the common taro flavoring that’s become so popular in purple. This is a drink that’s starkly simple given its surroundings, like a vodka soda ordered at a complicated cocktail bar. I’m not upset.
Yeah, but get to the cuttlefish balls and piggy buns, man, that’s what we’ve been waiting for!
Okay, okay. The first is actually a red herring (not the actual fish, I mean a misleading detail). It’s an item on the menu but I didn’t actually order it. We came fairly full from a dinner prior and were making this visit more of dessert. I presume the squid-like fish lends itself to orb form in much a similar manner as octopus to takoyaki. But I’ll have to return sometime to find out. Other savory selections include a banh mi sandwich, chicken wings, dumplings, tempura, and shrimp or lobster balls.
The sweet piggy buns — the menu actually says “bun” but I remain confused over the plural form of bun, Help me Tom Cruise! — arrive as cute as advertised with little eyes ears and noses steamed on to the airy dough puffs, ours filled with a pretty mild red bean paste. They make for a better photo than an amazing bite, but they’re pleasant enough at $6.99 for three.
Google “sweet piggy buns” and you’ll see that Bubbles N’ Bites ain’t the first to refine swine into an Insta-friendly snack treat; many online version even use food coloring to pink-up the porkers. But that clearly doesn’t jive with the “safe, natural and hygienic ingredients” ethos here, so these are ghost piggies with jaundiced appendages.
Anyway, you can go to any one of the other bubble tea houses around town and find similar things to suck up fat straws, as far as the drinks go. But it’s little touches like these sweet piggy buns that set Bubbles N’ Bites apart. In their words:
“Bubble’s N’ Bites conveys every surprise moment, through every drink, we share with you the happy experience exclusive to us.”
