Chatime Bubble Tea — Restaurant in Ottawa

While it is another Chatime, I was really happy that they decided to open up in Chinatown again. Chinatown is an incredibly vibrant place that allows for a plethora of multicultural events to occur. While the location is smaller than others, they work with what they have. The staff members always greet you with a welcoming smile and guide you through each step of ordering your drink. The drinks are incredibly consistent and the service is amazing. While the service is still on the slow side, they are constantly improving given that they are a relatively new store. I don't know what they do to their milk teas but they are incredibly creamy while still maintaining that excellent tea flavour. In addition to that, they are one of two locations that have the Very Mango Slush/Smoothie or Mango Mania that contains real mangos. Every time I go in there is always someone ordering it so you can tell that it is amazing! For all of their drinks, I highly recommend minimum/no sugar as they are all very sweet! Not to mention, they carry baked goods as well! I've had the twice baked rare cheese tart and that thing is so dreamy. While they don't have an oven on site, I highly recommend taking it home and heating it up. I can definitely see myself coming...

This chatime replaces the other one on Somerset, it's the same owner. Chatime is solidly middle grade in terms of boba brands in Canada but it seems to get better attention in Ottawa due to lack of other options, at least until recently.

Not sure if it's staff or whatever but it's a downgrade from the previous chatime. Less space, new less experienced staff, paper straws that aren't as good (thanks government).

• major community gossip (known as tea) incoming*

It could be a 4 (for ottawa boba only) but I'm docking a star honestly due to the weird, deeply vengeful behavior of the owner (they own all chatimes in Ottawa as well as DAO & tealive) who basically has gone out of their way to cause some kind of chinatown festival turf war based on what SEEM like minor slights or even oversights by the chinatown business association. I invite them to write a tell-all news article explaining why trying to undercut the traditional festival FOR YEARS was the mature thing to do.

Spill the tea, change my mind.

PS: stop confessing to turf wars you didn't...

My friends and I were ordering drinks and a Uber delivery man comes in to pick up a drink. He walked up and showed the order details on his phone to the worker. The worker rudely said "Can you read it out to me"? The delivery man didn't understand and showed him again. The worker snarkily said "What's the name? Can you read it out to me?" when he could clearly see it on the phone. The delivery man was still confused but understood and read it. The worker said "See? Was it that hard? It's good to practice English". There was no need to be so rude and make fun of him for not being fluent in English.

The worker was an Asian male, a little pudgy, and had a bowl cut. He was working at 10:30pm on Saturday. I hope he is removed from the customer...