Tea 1 and Thai Noodle 2!

Venturing around the college area of downtown Berkeley last week my roommate and I wanted to try so many places there that looked appetizing, but  we were on a limited budget of $80. Near Telegraph avenue next door to Tacos Sinaloa was a boba tea shop that had boards with nice pictures of their flavors of boba teas and other drinks. I picked the cucumber green tea drink with aloe vera because I walked up a hill to get there and it looked pretty refreshing. My roommate had their lemon jasmine boba tea. While we waited for our drinks the owner mentioned that if we bought our drinks in a glass mason jar for an extra dollar or so, that we would get to keep it and bringing it back to the store would get us 10 cents off the next drink which sounded pretty cool. After we got our drinks and were on our way out the owner was very friendly in saying have a nice day and see you again.

Credits to yelp for this picture of the exterior

Closeup of the menu

Fresh Cucumber Green tea with Aloe Vera and Lemon Jasmine tea with boba

The drinks definitely did not taste like anything I expected it to. There was a small touch of sugar added (I’m used to very sugary drinks) when trying the cucumber with aloe vera green tea drink that I thought brought out the other green tea and lightly sugared cucumber flavors instead of overpowering. I thought my drink tasted bitter at first but after a few more sips I actually got used to the slight bitterness combined with the other hints of sweetness. My roommate asked me why I didn’t order their ice cream tea drink, and honestly I didn’t notice it on their outside menu but I want to try that next time even though I really ended up liking the green tea with cucumber drink a lot. I had a sip of my roommate’s lemon and jasmine green tea, I liked how there was a lot of boba but I couldn’t get over the bitterness I thought I tasted in that drink and my roommate liked my drink more.

We were really hungry for some dinner and noticed a restaurant a few doors down from Tea 1 called Thai Noodle 2. Not having Thai food in a while we decided to give it a try. We liked how we were immediately greeted and seated right away, but more so how great the food was. I had read many negative yelp reviews about the same place and was a bit hesitant to eat there at first, but I was so surprised that the all of the food that we ordered was so good and arrived in a fast and orderly manner. We started with spicy fried calamari which was addictive and it had much more of a tender texture than when I tried it from Fisherman’s Wharf. We also ordered crab fried rice with extra seafood for $2 extra and I had the Lord of noodle entrée with ground meat and mixed seafood for $9. There was a huge amount of real crab in my roommate’s fried rice and my dish was a good sized portion as well. The waitress was very friendly too with constantly refilling our water.

Spicy fried calamari

Crab Fried Rice with extra seafood

Lord of Noodle dish  (lots of seafood and ground pork over noodles)

Our bill from Tea 1 for two drinks was a little over $8 and our bill at Thai Noodle 2 was $33.00. The next time I revisit that area I would love to go back to both of these great places, maybe try a different seafood dish from Thai Noodle 2 and Tea 1’s ice cream milk tea. Visiting these and other intriguing places I saw nearby such as Koja Kitchen, Tacos Sinaloa, and a Japanese curry restaurant was so worth the uphill walk.