BlackBall

Shop 8 206 Bourke St Melbourne
Date visited: 2nd February 2013

We have wanted to visit BlackBall for over two weeks now, but things kept popping up and we ended up not going.  Finally we had a chance last weekend, after a quick lunch at Hokuto.

BlackBall specialises in Taiwanese drinks and desserts.   According to their website, they got their name from their main ingredient, 'xian cao' (aka grass jelly) for it's black jelly goodness and yam balls in their desserts :)

How it works is you make your order at the counter, pick up a receipt stub and wait for your number to be called.  The interior of BlackBall was modern and pretty - there was a weird darkened night-clubby niche at the back, to which the fraternising young couples all tended to gravitate.  @.@

I was really thirsty so I had a Red Tea Boba.  You could choose to have your own level of sweetness and options of red/ green tea.

Red Tea Boba $4.70

To me, the red tea tasted like green tea, but it was still good.  Pearls were perfect.

MerlinFan had the BlackBall Signature.  You could choose to have it hot, cold, warm or icy.  Warm was with melted grass jelly, and cold with ice shavings.  The dish consisted of Taro Q, golden sweet potato, yam balls, sweet potato balls, red bean and pearls.  

Blackball signature $6.90

We had our dessert icy.  The shaved ice was underneath - I felt it could have used a bit more syrup as it tasted just like the grass jelly that sat on top.  The pearls were nicely done and the grass jelly wobbly and smooth.  Although I've never been a huge fan of glutinous balls and not very familiar with Taiwanese desserts, this was pretty refreshing.




<a href="http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/71/1722844/restaurant/CBD/Blackball-at-ChinaTown-Melbourne"><img alt="Blackball at ChinaTown on Urbanspoon" src="http://www.urbanspoon.com/b/link/1722844/biglink.gif" style="border:none;padding:0px;width:200px;height:146px" /></a>