NAKAMA Café @ Headquarters — Restaurant in Chiang Mai Province

We came to check out the place because of the good reviews about it but a bit disappointing with the taste of the bubble tea. We feel that it’s about an average bubble tea.

We tried 2 different tea—Taiwanese Bubble Tea and Midnight Cacao Brown Sugar Bubble tea. The Taiwanese Bubble Tea was just average like we mentioned earlier although the bubble are quite nice, soft but with good texture. The other one, Midnight Cacao Brown Sugar Bubble Tea was overpowering with the cacao flavor competing with quite sweet brown sugar bubbles and it didn’t taste like anything special about the cacao flavor actually.

Price wise, it’s quite expensive, except for the plain Taiwanese Bubble Tea. We have tried different bubble tea from other places and there are places that make better bubble tea with reasonable price than this.

What we like about this place is it has a potential to make you feel cozy with its minimal Japanese style of decoration. But, we only give actually 2.5 stars for this place because the place feels cluttered with many employees working behind the counter and yet, work gets done quite slowly. From our experiences traveling and visiting many places, small place like this would probably need not more than 2 people working in one shift. They had 5 people working behind a small counter at the time we were visiting the place and it makes the place feel so cramped and loud inside and like we said... it takes time to get your order. So, it wasn’t a pleasant place to sit and relax. The place lacks friendly vibes actually.

So, the best part about this place is its...

This used to be one of my favorite bubble tea shops. The drinks were consistently delicious, and the service had always been efficient and professional. Staff members in the past were attentive, well-trained, and handled orders with care.

Unfortunately, my most recent visit was deeply disappointing. The staff appeared unprepared, especially when dealing with online orders, which were repeatedly entered incorrectly—causing unnecessary delays. At the time, there were no other walk-in customers apart from our group, yet we were left waiting with no progress being made.

What stood out most was the fact that walk-in customers received little to no attention at all. Staff prioritized handling online orders over the people physically present at the counter, leaving us waiting without any indication of when we might be served.

While I understand that managing both online and in-store orders can be challenging, walk-in customers—who make the effort to visit in person—should not be overlooked.

In the end, we decided to leave without placing an order, despite having come specifically to support the shop. I truly hope the owner takes this issue seriously and works to ensure that all customers, regardless of how they place their orders, are given the attention and service...

Interesting choices on the menu, all very Japanese, and unusual options to customize for a bubble tea shop, with soy or almond milk, stevia as sweetener and low cal bubbles. Out of curiosity I tried the latter with brown sugar bubbles although they were a bit disappointing, no trace of brown sugar. Maybe it was only forgotten to be added but I'd advise to go with regular bubbles, I think they'd be more enjoyable. Houjicha latte was flavorful. Warm option is not available at all times. The store git busy after around 11am on a weekday for both take out and dine in. The interior is cute same as the entire design. Friendly staff, pick up is with a buzzer.

Update to 4 stars. Hoijicha was a bit chalky this time and chockfull of ice only. Staff is still charming but might need some training, it took me 10 minutes from ordering to paying for a...