Boba Bear Bubble Milk Tea serves bubble tea from the Ernest Rutherford Building on Engineering Road at the University of Canterbury in Ilam, Christchurch, and holds a 4.3 Google rating. Its listed web presence is an Instagram page, @bobabearnz.
Bubble tea stands or falls on two things: the tea base and the pearls. A good cup is built on properly brewed tea, so the flavour carries through the milk instead of tasting of powder, and on pearls cooked in fresh batches, chewy right through rather than hard or mushy. Most shops let you adjust sugar and ice, and regulars tend to start around half sweetness, since the tapioca and syrups add more sugar than first-timers expect. Drink it soon after buying, as pearls firm up once a cup sits, especially over ice.
Tucked into the engineering precinct at UC, it makes an easy stop between lectures on campus.