This post's overview:
The Alley London address: 272 High Holborn, London.
Is The Alley the best bubble tea in London now? Read this post to find out! The Alley Holborn menu & review – my first impressions. Is the Alley is London as good as everywhere else in the world?
Hi guys! Great news, on the 8th of December, The Alley finally opened its first bubble tea store in London. Is The Alley the best bubble tea in London now? The Alley Holborn menu & review – all in this post!
My bubble tea obsession
Hi, if you’re new to this blog, my name is Liza and I’m the biggest boba tea fan. On this blog, I previously reviewed 10 bubble tea stores in London and rated them, so you know, which one is great and which one isn’t. When Xing Fu Tang came to London, I was the first one to review it. Now, when I came back from my trip to South Asia, I found out, that my favourite bubble tea has opened its first store in London. I couldn’t have been happier. I’m talking about The Alley.
My first experience with The Alley
I first learned about The Alley when I was in Seoul last year (read my post about the best things to do on a long layover in Seoul, South Korea). We were just walking around and saw the antler logo and a very intriguing menu. We came in and tried their signature Brown Sugar Deerioca tea and instantly fell in love. So much that we found The Alley in Tokyo (read my post about the most Instagrammable places in Tokyo) the next day! A couple of weeks ago, I was in Kuala Lumpur and I was looking for the Alley as well – and I found it. It was great as always.
That’s where I found out that The Alley London will be coming soon – I checked their global website and found out that they are opening a store in London in Holborn.
I couldn’t find any information on the official website about the Alley and where it started, but I found a couple of articles stating that the Alley started in Taiwan and they cater for more ethical and health-conscious consumers by producing all the tapioca in-store and sourcing only sustainable cane sugar.
As far as I could remember, the Alley in Kuala Lumpur didn’t have hot drinks. However, The Alley in London has hot drinks! I was thrilled to try the signature Brown Sugar Deerioca as a hot boba tea. It was amazing!
The Alley in Holborn has a bit of seating space. It’s very busy, so you’ll probably have to wait for a while to find a free seat. There are maybe only about 5-6 tables.
I visited the Alley on a working day during lunchtime and it was pretty full. There were maybe about 15 people before me in the queue and I waited for my drink for about 25 minutes. Make sure to plan your time accordingly.
As you can see, many of the signature drinks are also available in London and many of the drinks are available hot – that’s perfect for cold weather and London in general. In 90% of the cases, I ask for the hot boba tea and the availability of the hot drinks made me very happy.
The Alley London prices are also similar to the other bubble tea places in London. You can see all The Alley prices in the picture above.
The Brown Sugar Deerioca Milk is £4.6, while the Brown Sugar Deerioca Tea is £4.8. There are also cheaper drinks like Peach Oolong Tea for just £3.4 and the Black Assam tea for £2.9. You can pay extra for the toppings (+£0.5) like Tapioca, coconut jelly and Konjak jelly.
They haven’t launched the Aurora drinks yet and I’m not sure if they will (perhaps closer to summer), but to be honest, I personally wasn’t a fan of them.
The 5 signature drinks in The Alley London are: Royal No. 9 Milk Tea, Macha Peach Oolong Tea, Brown Sugar Deerioca, Snow Strawberry Lulu and Snow Velvet Peach Oolong Tea.
Summary of The Alley Holborn – is it the best bubble tea in London?
To sum it up, I must say that the Alley is great in London as it is everywhere else I’ve tried it. There are some drinks that I’m not a fan of (e.g. the colourful drinks in the bottles – Aurora series – they look amazing, but the taste is not for everyone), and they don’t exist in London just yet (as of 12/19). The signature drinks like the Brown Sugar Deerioca is definitely one of the best bubble teas in London. It’s good both hot and cold and it has signature hot freshly made tapioca. It’s also available with creme brulee. For me, it’s certainly the best boba tea & brown sugar milk tea. How about you?
You might also like my other posts:
The best bubble tea in London: testing 10 different stores
Xing Fu Tang review (China Town)