Houcailei Tea House

Drinks were good! Customer service good as well. But no air conditioning. Had to go outside to cool off. It wasn’t as hot as the restaurant that we went to beforehand so I can give this place a better rating.

First time here. Can’t say about anything else but their shaved ice was not great. Shave ice was more like crushed ice. The taro balls and grass jelly were pretty standard. Unfortunately the pudding tasted pretty artificial. Maybe their bubble teas are better?

Tried the Wawa AD milk with purple rice and red bean. The Wawa AD milk flavor was quite slight and watered down but the glutinous purple rice was quite tasty and starchy in a good way. It was good, but overall, average tasting bubble tea. Highlights here are the variety of flavor options and add in toppings you can choose. Quality seemed just okay. Does the basic job if you're craving bubble tea.

Not the best spot; we were here by convenience and hoping for the best, but it did not work in our favor. For $8 a drink, you'd expect something spectacular and delicious... But, we didn't experience any of that. The service was questionable, as the guy that was originally taking our order felt that a phone call on his cel was more important and left us on the spot for someone else to finish our order...if the drinks were amazing, I'd forget about the poor customer service; I didn't even finish my drink so we won't be back.

I went here for the first time as we are just visiting Vancouver and the person that was working was super nice. He helped me pick a drink and customize it “brown sugar milk tea” and it was actually REALLY GOOD. He was also super fast. I wish I knew his name but thank you to the guy who helped me out today. Also I love the presentation of the drink. Super cute

Not edible. Look closely at photo. This was peach yakult black tea and given to me like this. Upon a closer look at home , I noticed the bottom was not fruit but diarrhea looking separated chunks . I did try one sip to see if I can drink the top but had to spit it out. I want a refund but not worth the gas to drive back...

Ordered few drinks and 4 topping grass jelly form Uber Eat. I requested without milk and ice for the grass jelly but it came with both ice and milk. Also with 3 topping only. Is it suppose to have grass jelly and 4 topping in one bowl? The pear slush was 70% melted. Its just like pear tea. Very disappointed. I will never order it again.

I think the drink I ordered here was pretty good it came with a bunch of toppings inside (pearls and grass jelly). It was a bit more special because it had caramel pearls in it which for me taste just slightly different than a brown sugar pearl it also translates into the liquid which makes it taste slightly different as it’s not too sweet since it was fresh milk tea I suppose. I think they could have given a bit more of the toppings but overall the drink wasn’t bad. The service was good though they were very nice when they ordered and let us know they were almost done with the caramel pearls and it would be 5mins more and it was 5mins more.

Visited: Sep 28 2019 I only found this place by accident after hearing good things about their Burnaby location. The location is at this tiny strip mall at the end of Alexandra road (in the same mall as Canadian pizza 2-for-1). (NB: The mall can use some serious lighting before it was pitch dark.) I got their signature brown sugar jelly milk tea (regular sugar and less ice) and I really like it! Their milk tea tasted mildly roasted, which I was not expecting. It wasn't too overpowering so no complaints. I can see why people like the brown sugar jelly, it's very unique and definitely delicious. The cashier gave me a takeaway menu upon leaving which had a 10% coupon on the corner. Yes please, I love coupons and I definitely will be back.

Went here to get some work done. Has Wi-Fi and some seating. Drinks were made quickly and friendly staff. Since I studied here for a couple of hours I got a few drinks. Their milk tea and fruit tea are both good.

Got the white peach oolong super fruit tea and it was simply amazing. Perfect level of sugar and flavourness

Very cute interior. I was a huge fan of their brown sugar jelly milk tea. The tea had a very smooth and almost creamy aftertaste that is enhanced by the milkiness. Lighter than brown sugar pearls if you get full from them but still want the flavour. 50% sweetness was good, if not a little sweet for me. We also ordered the milk tea caramel with jelly and pearls. This one was more of a miss, the caramel part was in the syrup of the pearls, or at the bottom of the cup. Unfortunately the milk to strip ratio was a bit off and the drink was not sweet enough as all flavours got drowned out by milk. Will be back to try more.

Another bubble tea shop in Richmond, guaranteed a solid drink every visit. My go to is their peach jelly tea (don't think that's their actual name on the menu, but it's served with a very strong tea base + pearl sized chunks of chewy peach jelly). I tried the peach oolong slush today, its likewise enjoyable & very refreshing, the jelly pieces are more refined after going through the blender, and less of a conscious chew is required. The oolong flavour really comes through despite it being a slushy type drink, most places tend to load up the ice levels to make a slush drink detracting from the actual flavour - this is not the case at houcailei. Would recommend the regular level of sweetness for this drink!

Houcailei is a bubble tea cafe that we frequent every once in a while. We usually go to the Burnaby location but this time we visited their Richmond location. We ordered our drinks for pick up and received it in this nice 10 year anniversary bag. This peach tea and jelly drink was one that interested me because I've seen it on their chalkboard stand for a while now. The peach tea had an artificial tea flavour to it which was disappointing. It was almost perfume-like so I wasn't a fan. I prefer the one from Suntea more. It also came with clear jelly that were cube shaped. I wasn't a fan of the jelly because it had a strange firm texture to it. The other drink that we got was the pineapple tea. We get pineapple tea quite often and love the one from Yi Fang so we wanted to see how this one fared. I wasn't a fan of it because similar to the peach tea, there was a strong artificial taste to it. Grayson liked it though. The strange part about this drink was that even though it also had jelly in it, it was a different type of jelly! It was a softer jelly that was easily drinkable unlike the one in the peach tea. How peculiar...

After coming it here several times, I've concluded that my favourite drink here is the jasmine green milk tea (5/5). A close second would be their brown sugar pearl(4/5). Though it's not as good as XFT on cambie, it's has it's own uniqueness to it. The fresh peach spring jelly is not too bad as well (4/5). I do recommend getting it less sweet. Go as less you can you think you can handle. I got it 50% sweet and it was still too sweet for me. Others I'd probably not get again are the lychee jelly pineapple tea (3/5) and Pineapple Yakult green tea (1/5 - tasted like bubble gum). Their regular milk tea isn't that great either in my opinion. I tried the handmade yam milk tea and the brown sugar jelly. It's the same base. The handmade yam topping is worth getting. It's mini yam mochi's! So good! Overall, not a bad a bubble tea place. It's super close to me so I can always pop by if I'm craving. Also you can collect points. 8 pts = free drink. 1 pt per drink.

Saw the BOGO weekend promo on their social media in May so decided to pop by! Best BOGO promotion I've seen recently! You are not restricted and allowed to order any different drinks on the menu for the FREE cup!! I got the Handmade Taro Balls Milk Tea⁠ while my boyfriend got the Grapefruit Lemon Green Tea with Honey & Mango Balls⁠. I always find their milk tea is more on the creamy milky side, I can really taste the milk! For the Lemon drink, the lemon pieces are candied lemon pieces so it wasn't too sour when slurping them. They only allowed 1 group at a time since the shop is small. We wanted Mango Balls in our BOGO drink and they actually gave it to us for free! That was really nice of them.

Love their drinks ! My go to is the peach oolong slush. It's not entirely slushed so it doesn't get icy when you finish the liquids. They don't have grass jelly but their brown sugar jelly is just as good !!

For some reason my previous post disappeared. We came on a weekend afternoon for their BOGO promotion! The line up was relatively short, but boy was the wait long. We waited 40 minutes in total! I think the main issue was there were only two people working and one seemed really new and kept messing up our order. We had to point out and correct the staff taking the order. We walked in the store and stood there for 5-10 minutes looking at the menu before the staff asked if we needed help... We ended up getting 4 drinks for $12, which is a great deal, but the process was so painful. Some drinks you can customize sugar, but not ice. Some drinks you can customize ice, but not sugar. Some drinks you can't customize. Oh dear! The poor workers were bombarded with making drinks and taking calls. They also ran out of this type of tea and pearls (only enough pearls for one drink). Sadly, they don't have grass jelly. Out of the 4 drinks, we didn't like 3 of them and the 4th we have yet to try. The pearls tasted old, but they were the last batch. Usually the drinks are better so I think this promotion really overwhelmed them. Maybe this promo wasn't a good idea.

My mom loves this place so she brought me here because she knows I love bubble tea! I ordered the Jasmine Milk Tea with Taro Balls and my mom usually gets the Oolong Milk Tea with Coffee Jelly. Drinks are customizable so that's super great as I usually have 50% or less sugar. My Jasmine Milk Tea was light and tasty compared to other places which can be quite watery and flavourless sometimes. They don't have regular pearls but they do offer other toppings as well. Since I got Taro Balls with mine (which I don't typically see in most places) it was a nice change up from the regular tapioca pearl! Our server today was super nice too and was very helpful since my mom's English is a bit broken so ordering sometime can be difficult. I've been here twice now and service is pretty quick and the place is very clean. Usually isn't too much of a line up and average pricing for the drinks. Would definitely come here again!

New fave boba spot in Richmond! The interior is super cute, a nice hangout spot to chill with friends and they have a big variety of drinks to choose from. I got the grape jelly fruit tea and the sugar level was perfect, jelly was soo tasty. Can't wait to go back again~~

My to-go order has always been the fresh peach & jelly spring tea. I absolutely love the bouncy texture of all their jellies. All the fruit teas I've tried so far has always been light + refreshing. Their brown sugar drinks tend to me more on the milky side than tea flavour. I posted more of our review on IG: @vncrfoodies

Ordered through ubereats a hot matcha green tea where 1/3 of it spilled into the bag. The lid had come loose during delivery. The hot tea arrived lukewarm. The store should have been aware that the lid may come loose and taped it down. Very disappointing with a $4.99 delivery fee.

This is a cozy place to hang out with friends, and I would recommend their brown sugar milk~ or watermelon smoothie if you are craving for something that would fresh up your mind~!

Worst bubble tea ever! Do not go here! We ordered pineapple tea and two milk teas with pearls! All I can say is WTH is this?!!! Went straight in the garbage bin. Waste of $$. And the girl with the purple hair had no customer service skills at all! I was so annoyed! How did this place even receive good ratings? Must have gotten paid...smh!

really love the passion fruit green tea！！ Best for summer. so fresh and not that sweet！Good place to have a rest and have an amazing drink!

greta place！ love the bubble tea there, the best ever had. especially their summer specials. watermelon is always my favorite summer flavors. My friend ordered milk tea with taro ball, also taste great. have to try place in Richmond