Bapu Teahouse — Restaurant in Winston-Salem

We checked out this place a few days ago. The setup is really cute, and so are the cups. However, the customer service from the young lady working there wasn't great.

We started off by asking about red tea. The lady told us it was her first day and she didn't know. No problem at all. I'm sure the first day can be stressful and confusing, so I just looked it up. Then my husband started asking about modifying sugar levels, and he asked a couple more questions, again to which she kept repeating she didn't know. By that point, we were hoping she could just ask the owner, but she just laughed it off and said she doesn't know.

So we both just decided to order drinks and experiment for ourselves. I ordered the original red milk tea, and my husband ordered the taro milk tea. She repeated my order after putting it in and said "one original oolong tea and one taro milk tea." I then said "wait I had asked for the red milk tea," to which she kind of rudely said "red and oolong are the same thing." At that point I was quiet and confused because I order bubble tea pretty often, and I know red and oolong are different. I also asked if boba was included or separate and she said included, but we were charged extra for boba, which we realized later.

There were some issues with the cash register for a few minutes so the owner came along and started to fix it. He was very nice, and then he also printed out the receipt and gave us the order. He then said I had ordered an oolong, and when I told him I ordered the red instead, he quickly fixed it. So the worker had clearly made that up, which again was unprofessional and annoying.

Our drinks were just okay. My drink was probably a 5/10. My first few sips had crunchy particles/powder/sugar? My husband's taro milk tea didn't taste like taro. It tasted pretty much like milk with a slight hint of a flavor. He took a few sips and then couldn't drink the rest. And he is not ever picky about his taro drinks. Our theory is that the drinks were probably intended on tasting a certain way, but I don't think the lady working there made our drinks right. So maybe it was just the way she made them? I'm not sure..

I want to note we get bubble tea around 1-2x a week, so we are pretty familiar with how the drinks should taste. I have tried bubble tea shops all around the US.

I reallllllly wanted to like this place. It's not too far from us and if I had liked it, I would probably stick to this place weekly instead of the one we usually go to. The flavor of the boba was fantastic, but the drinks themselves weren't great. I would like to give the benefit of the doubt to the tea place itself and assume it was just made wrong by the person working.

I think this place had/has the potential for 5 stars to be totally honest, but I think the unprofessional experience we personally had with her and the lack of flavor in our drinks made it an unfavorable experience. The drinks were a bit pricey (About $7.25 for a drink, boba, tax, and an additional credit card processing fee). So for that, I expected a much better experience and drink. I am still debating if we will...

I love boba tea and this place is convenient since it’s in the mall but today has been the third occasion within a month that we’ve traveled to the mall solely to get boba and were at first, ignored by the young girls behind the counter on their phones, (one girl at the counter even turned her back to us today when we walked up-short girl blonde hair) to be acknowledged and then told “oh, we’re closed” by another girl there. This is 45 minutes before the mall is closes. Not sure if I’m personally being refused service or if they’ve made a practice of closing up shop almost an hour before the mall closes but remaining behind the counter on their phones until 8:00pm. I joked with my boyfriend in the way there today that what if they say they are closed again…. And they did. Tiger tea across the street saved the day and the staff is absolutely amazing. Money well...

Reading all the other reviews I can’t sway anyone’s experience esp since I ordered my boba through DoorDash. But just from the taste and the packaging I will order again it was really really good. The only thing I’d say is that the cold foam at the top was salty?? Idk it wasn’t bad it was just different. All in all after reading the other comments maybe just order online lol customer service seems to be...