Happy at Happy Lemon: Green Tea, Cream Cheese and other Things

Tired of Starbucks and Coffee Bean? Are Serenitea's sugar levels not high (or low) enough for you? Time to try something new. Happy Lemon is a popular tea franchise in Hong Kong, and thanks to a few trendy entrepreneurs, its now here in the Philippines! You can visit Happy Lemon's first Philippine foothold at Promenade Greenhills (in between Starbucks and Coffee Bean!)

What used to be the comic book section of Fully Booked is now a trendy tea house, Happy Lemon has a really (as in really) wide selection of tea drinks. You'll probably find something you'd like if you look hard enough. For me though, this was the only drink that caught my eye:

My drink (left) was Green Tea with Rock Salt and Cream Cheese! Now ain't that something new? When I ordered this, the lady at the counter asked me: "Sir do you know how to drink this?", "Nope!" I replied and she told me how to drink it: "Don't mix it, just drink it". As  you can see, the Green Tea and Cream Cheese are separate from each other. So when I drank it from a straw, it tasted like what it looked like, cold green tea at first, then cream cheese later. Rather disappointing! Nothing special at all.

 Halfway through, i just ended up going against ate's advise and mixed it up and it was a whole better experience. That super light  aroma filled green tea was given the weight of milky and creamy cream cheese with just a little kick of salt in every drink. It was a real pleasure to drink. It was NOT a Starbucks Green tea clone, No it wasn't, It was something else.

Then a friend of mine tried the same thing, and here is what I missed about ate's instructions. DON'T USE A STRAW! If you think about it, when drinking straight from the cup, the green tea at the bottom would flow through the Cream Cheese and Rock Salt, carrying the taste of the two. Now that's pretty clever!

Now if I could only remember why I had a straw in the first place!

Zen Tea

Milk tea is getting popular nowadays... arguably, the best place to get some is at "Serenitea"; branches have been popping up all over the metro and a trend is starting. Though I like Serenitea (even though at times I think its gonna be just the next "Zagu" craze), its a tad to pricey. Almost or even above the hundred peso mark! Zagu and Quickly weren't that expensive with all the pearls, crystals and what not! So Serenitea reminds me more of Starbucks than almost defunct pearl shake stands of childhood memory. (I'm not really a fan of Starbucks)

If you want affordable and good tasting milk tea, here's a place you might want to try out!

A friend introduced me to the place when we were out on lunch break one day. We drank at a small stall located across UA&P on Pearl Drive (Ironically in front of a Starbucks). Its in Ortigas Center, Here's a map if you can't find your way.

View Zen Tea in a larger map

As for the pricing, It ain't that bad!

Everything under 70! and they come with the Pearls too! Now thats's more of a bargain don't you think? The flavors of Serenitea are more "Authentic" but this stuff isn't a slacker in the taste department! No "sugar levels" here, Zen Tea is straight to the point, just give your flavor and size and that's it! the XL its pretty big too! I think bigger than Serenitea's! I don't see this place dislodging the heavyweight Serenitea, but I think its worth a shot for all those Milk Tea lovers out there!

Patalo is kuya sa PIC eh!