岩茶Elitea (Elite Boba) — Restaurant in Chicago

I heard great things about Elitea. I love tea almost as much as coffee and my friends know this. They've been telling me that I'm going to love Elitea and I got pretty excited as I have never had milk tea that I could drink let alone enjoy. I went to the location in Schaumburg as that is much more convenient for me. Chinatown is the only location available for review, so I am posting here.

Elitea has a good selection of teas and tea beverages, but I wanted to try their milk teas. The lady at the register was very nice and helpful. She explained that the brown sugar milk tea was made with oolong and the signature tea was made with black tea. I ordered the brown sugar milk tea, signature milk tea and matcha with cream top. The first two I ordered 30% sugar and the matcha regular (my mistake).

The matcha was way too sweet, but again, this was my fault. I could taste the matcha, but beyond that, the drink was not too good. Somehow this was watery, which I did not expect from a matcha milk tea. I expected it more along the lines of a blended drink made with milk. Perhaps this was just cream poured into watered down matcha? The cream itself was decent. It seems like it was made with heavy cream, salt and sugar. I do something similar myself, but I add cream cheese to give it a bit of sourness. I use it for cakes rather than tea, but I thought to give the combo a try. I make this drink often and make a thicker matcha and then blend it with warm milk. I do not typically add the cream top myself, but this is personal taste. It conflicted more than I would like with this drink, but I am not a fan of mixing thick toppings with thin beverages. I would prefer steamed milk on this type of drink, but again personal preference. This was the best of the three that I ordered. I would possibly order this one again with 30% sugar, but it was far inferior to the one I make at home.

The signature drink was almost good. I could somewhat taste the tea, however it was over brewed and bitter. This is a big change from other milk teas that I had as I was never able to taste the tea (I believe many use some type of powder mix). The problem with this was that is was too thin and lacked tea flavor and the little tea flavor it had was not good. One bonus I would add however is that I had to do a double take on the first sip because as I said, it was almost good. It has potential to be a good drink, but would need to have a stronger tea flavor, but from a properly brewed tea (not by over brewing). This is usually achieved by either using bolder tea or using more leaves for your brew. Perhaps there is even a further issue in the preparation of the tea, but I did not order straight black tea to judge that.

The brown sugar milk tea is what takes this review down so much... I was initially surprised when I heard that Oolong tea was used for milk tea. I consider Oolong more of a delicate tea and easily overpowered. I really like Oolong and I greatly enjoy drinking it. It is a nice tea to drink with company because it is very pleasant and makes for better conversation somehow. I've never even considered using Oolong myself for making milk tea, but I thought maybe this place knows something I don't? Anyway, this drink was just awful!! I could not taste the tea at all, but the bitterness really came through. I've never brewed Oolong bitter, so I have no idea what is happening here. The boba were also slimy and partially disintegrated. The texture was absolutely terrible. The only thing that came to mind when the boba was in my mouth was that it was a slimy ball of mold... It wasn't old or moldy however, just the texture made me think of mold. The brown sugar syrup seemed like light brown sugar syrup. Not as bold as I'd like it, but this was ok. Overall however, this drink was undrinkable.

The drinks look nice and the customer service is good. That is the only thing that keeps it from being 1 star. I really hope this is not the best that the Chicago area...

I have been coming to Elitea AT LEAST once a week and I notice their service is getting downward seriously. Their old staffs used to be very nice and friendly. Just now I got my milktea with the cup didn't seal properly, so when I shake it, it spilled over the place. I thought I was going to finish the drink before going somewhere else so I just poked the straw and drank it.Then we decided to go somewhere else so I came to them and asked the guy to seal it again. He came out with the same plastic lid and he did reseal it in some way. That's okay as long as the drink doesn't spill when I hold it. I walked back to my table and realized the drink was spilling again, so there's still the same hole on the side which did not seal properly. I came back to them and let them know that I just need my cup to seal properly, I did not ask for a new drink because I need to walk to different place and don't want my drink to be a mess. They both gave me a weird annoyed look and I was so confused!!!?? There wasn't that many customers atm and I just needed my cup to reseal .... what's so difficult about it? New plastic lid or old one, it doesn't matter. I don't want to hold a drink with water drips all over the place, that’s all. They ended up give me that plastic lid to cover on top of it and of course once the water spilled out, it's dripping all over the place again. I ended up threw the drink away since it's way too troublesome walking...

Came on a Thursday afternoon, It wasn't busy. You order via touch screen and there are a lot of options.

Because it's summer I wanted to try a fruit tea and so I tried their flamingo which is passion fruit with jasmine green tea and watermelon $6.25.

I asked for 50% half sugar but it was still very sweet. Which is why I docked one star otherwise I would have given them five stars. The drink was very refreshing and you could taste a passion fruit and there was actual seeds in there so I know they use real watermelon it was a good mix and I recommend!

I also ordered the matcha latte with taro and boba $5.55 (additional 80 cents to upgrade to size large). They use real taro you can taste it as you sip it through the straw nice chunks of it. And the matcha was well flavored. I recommend this one as well. The boba was very soft and fresh, it wasn't rubbery.

If I'm ever in the food court area I'll go ahead and order from them again but I wouldn't go out of my way. They also charge a 3% fee if you pay with credit card. Lame. But I actually didn't see a cash paying option unless I missed it???

Worth a try if you're down in the basement. The basement wasn't very clean and it's just a dingy dirty basement as you'd expect...