Gong Cha Annandale — Restaurant in Annandale

I ain’t gonna lie, this was an opportunistic visit! We were next-door chowing down on some lunch and we decided to visit Gong Cha for the first time. Let me start off by saying I was immediately intrigued at the chocolate egg waffle with ice cream and I didn’t understand how the word egg really fit in until we got it and discovered that it was made up of puffed up egg shaped pockets with a chocolate, cake-like, texture inside each little egg! wow!

I know we shouldn’t let the other item we ordered pale in comparison in my review because it was also what I would consider to be spectacular! We ordered a Strawberry Earl Grey Smoothie with Cookies. What’s really interesting is that they let you choose what percentage of sugar you would like on a scale from 0 to 100%. Being that me and my girlfriend tend to react non-optimally when lots of sugar is involved we decided to be conservative and chose 30%. It was the perfect number! It also allowed for the taste of the earl Grey to shine through!

If you were looking for something different with a lot of varieties that taste fresh and fun then I highly recommend this...

Tasty but unassuming bubble tea shop. From the exterior it's nothing exciting but they did a great job with the interior. Clean and modern lounge area. This is straight up bubble tea and milk tea shop.

I tried the matcha bubble tea and the strawberry milk tea. I'm not a huge matcha fan but theirs was quite good. Nice clean earthy flavor, not bitter like some.

The strawberry milk tea was excellent! I asked for 50% sugar and 70% ice. I'm from Texas so we use a lot of ice. Initially I was tempted to ask for more, but honestly it was perfect the way they made it. Good sweetness level, cool, and very refreshing with a real strawberry flavor and nice strawberry pieces in the bottom. Not sure if there was anything artificial but it tasted 100% natural to me.

If you need a bigger selection, try The Block in Annandale. However, I can say I prefer Gong Cha over the other chains I've tried in VA. My only concern about this location is that parking can be limited. If needed, parked nearby and walk over....

Drinks are good as expected, but staff needs more training.

The staff was taking to other person while taking my order the first time, so I have to repeat. And I ordered pearl milk tea, the staff added extra 50 cents on charge for pearl. I noticed that and brought that up. He returned me 50 cents with coins. I think the order should be redo instead just give me coins since I paid with credit card. And 50 cents extra charge is actually more than 50 cents if you consider tax in it. I didn't bring that up since the staff doesn't seem to care and I don't wanna talk so much to get a few cents back. By the way there was only me and the other client, so he should have plenty of time for redo the order if...