
Black Pearl Tea House
In Garden Grove, enjoy unique flights of boba tea and ube-powered sweets
At some point, it becomes challenging if not impossible to keep all of the area’s different boba tea shops straight, given that many have similar names and few have unique menu items. Black Pearl Tea House figured this out after pivoting from its prior name (TocoToco) and management, adopting a memorable identity and marketing something we haven’t seen anywhere else: a boba flight, giving guests the opportunity to try four different types of bubble tea from 16 possible choices, all for a single price of $14.
You can choose from 14 different teas, and each will be assembled as a complete but miniaturized version of the original – super cool, limited only by the reality of portion sizes. If you want the same quantity of liquid in a single flavor, you’ll pay half as much for a standard drink; the extra cost here is for the added labor and glassware required to assemble four little cups rather than one.
Thanks to the addition of boba, Black Pearl’s flight is more elaborate than Contra’s coffee and tea flights in Orange, or the Thai drink flight at Long Beach’s Manaow, and offers more choices. If we could change anything, we might turn down the sweetness level a little, but that’s a minor quibble.
While the flights are certainly a big draw here, the individual drinks are solid, as are their desserts. We’d recommend trying Black Pearl’s powdered sugar-dusted ube cookies to get the full experience; they also sell hot, fried ube bites that are like mochi donuts, if that’s more your speed.
Stats
Price: $-$$
Service: Counter
Open Since: 2021
Addresses
12911 Magnolia St. Suite A
Garden Grove, CA 92841
714.462.6258
Instagram: @blackpearl.teahouse