iTea — Restaurant in San Francisco

As much as I LOVE iTea the chain, I CANNOT support this specific store location! Until this store all the iTea stores I went to before had kept an eye on the quality and freshness of their ingredients--especially the fruits as they can oxidize & go bad extremely quickly once you cut them up-- and the bobas are never overcooked, sticky, or old.

UNFORTUNATELY, I ordered the "summer special" of a FRESH watermelon slushy with mini boba and was told I couldn't modify the sweetness because it was premade. I should have listened to my inner warning at that and ordered something else. That was my 1st mistake. That drink was bad all around. Seems like they got lazy and made too big of a batch since the slushy had sat too long and DIDNOT taste like fresh watermelon. It tasted a bit metallic and more like it was made from an artificial powder mix. It was also full of sugar (probably an attempt to mask the taste. If that wasn't bad enough, the boba pearls had sat around and were like the texture of rice porridge. (Probably lazy and made one big batch in the morning rather than smaller fresh batchs throughout the day like other stores.) All soft, no chewy al dente texture...

The only reason I am shorting this place a star is because they did not have the Thai tea I ordered but I think that's because we came in so late so probably not their fault. otherwise one of the many, many holes in the wall in the sunset District that you should stick your head into if you have the chance and are looking for some boba, milk tea or Shave Ice. Very friendly service and one of the places open late on Irving past 19th Avenue. Another one of the places I always suspect are laundering operations because they "prefer* cash and the machines are down that take cards a little too often but I can assure you they are not the only place where this is on the Reg. And it always looks like it's chronically staffed by someone's cousin's friend. get there early if you want the Thai iced...

I wouldn't recommend getting too excited for the amount of flavors they have. Chances are, you ask for a certain flavor and they'll tell you "oh, we don't have that one yet". And I wouldn't recommend spending another second looking to get another flavor because chances are, they won't have that one either. My guess is they probably only have 38% of the flavors displayed on their screen. And their 'hot'* drinks carry the heat of a 20 seconds microwave session. 30% sweetness felt like it was giving me 100% diabetes. I can't imagine what 100% tastes like. All in all, simple things that can be corrected, if they're truly interested in delivering a good experience worth everyone's time,...