Westport’s new bubble tea shop has something for everyone

My first introduction to bubble tea came at the Mall of America early in my college years. For eleven of the fifteen minutes respite I got from smoothing out the denim wall at the Gap, I was darting through a pedestrian highway en route to mollify my new addiction. It’s shockingly easy to become hooked on this Taiwanese import: The combination of creamy milk, iced sweet tea and chewy tapioca pearls (the “bubbles,” also called boba) is like a caffeinated milkshake with bonus gummies. At GoCha Tea 2 (4111 Pennsylvania Ave., KCMO) in Westport, there are endless flavor combinations for bubble tea (and coffee, if that’s your pleasure) — everything from a lavender-hued taro root milk tea to jasmine tea finished with a savory cream cheese milk foam (“mustache tea”) — and all drinks can be customized to sweetness preference. Bubble tea newbies would do well to start with a strawberry matcha latte. In it you’ll find pretty layers of Japanese green tea, opaque white milk (your choice between two percent, soy, almond or coconut) and jewel-toned fruit — with round pearls mixed in, of course.