Cup O’ Joy or It’s Boba Time? The final verdict

Boba fanatics at USC all recognize the unspoken rule. In order to find decent, accessible boba, one must venture beyond the Law Cafe or Dean’s List to one of two off-campus locations: Cup O’ Joy or It’s Boba Time. But when given the option to choose between the two locations, sometimes it becomes difficult to one’s advantages over the other.

In terms of pricing, both Cup O’ Joy and It’s Boba Time charge approximately $3 to $4 for a regular-sized drink. Given almost identical prices, deciding between Cup O’ Joy and It’s Boba Time really boils down to what one is looking for in one’s boba drink.

Lychee Tea with Lychee Jelly

Cup O’ Joy’s regular lychee green tea with coconut jelly provided a strong syrupy flavor; it contains a refreshing taste. The coconut jelly complemented the green tea, enhancing the tea’s sweetness. However, the tea itself was weak, with none of the rich herbal hints one can expect from well-steeped tea. The tea tasted much more like a fruit juice than a tea, and even as a fruit juice it was heavily artificial with very little natural fruit flavor: The drink entered with a concentrated sugary profile but left a mildly bitter aftertaste. This aftertaste was half-covered by the sweet lychee jelly, which, in addition to disguising the bitterness, also added a fun texture to the drink.

It’s Boba Time did not sell pure lychee tea; instead its lychee green tea was mixed into a peach lychee iced tea (which was essentially a lychee green tea with peach fruit bits). The peach lychee iced tea had a less blatantly artificial flavor than its Cup O’ Joy counterpart — perhaps part of this was due to the fact that it incorporated real peach fruit to give it a more natural sweetness. Along with tasting less artificial, the peach lychee iced tea was also milder, and the tea profile was much stronger: instead of being syrupy sweet, the flavor focused on the green tea and incorporated subtle hints of lychee and peach. Most of the sweetness came from the lychee jelly, allowing the jelly to serve an independent purpose from the tea and also allowing the tea and the jelly to symbiotically coexist to create a more complex flavor profile.

Winner: It’s Boba Time

Jasmine Green Tea with Boba

Similar to its lychee tea, Cup O’ Joy’s jasmine green tea focused its spotlight on the sweetness of the tea rather than the tea flavor itself. At 100 percent sweetness, the sugary taste drowned out most of the green tea essence, surpassing even its extraordinarily sweet boba. While the resulting flavor was far from unpleasant, the tea did not offer respite from the boba’s onslaught of sugar. Instead, the boba used its glutinous texture to buffer the intensely sweet tea, releasing the sugar in a strong but steady stream. The boba itself retained a soft and chewy texture — much softer than usual boba and slightly sweeter than expected.

The jasmine green tea sold at It’s Boba Time was far less sweet and far richer in its green tea profile than its Cup O’ Joy counterpart. Even at mild concentration, the jasmine flavor stood out from the delicate sweetness, making the drink much more a tea and much less a dessert. The boba was also less pliant and less sweet than that of Cup O’ Joy, creating for a much more texture-filled (as opposed to flavor-filled) experience.

Winner: It’s Boba Time

The Final Verdict

In choosing between Cup O’ Joy and It’s Boba Time, the real question is one of flavor — those preferring sweet drinks to tea-flavored drinks might enjoy Cup O’ Joy better, whereas fans of high tea quality would probably prefer It’s Boba Time. Ultimately, the best boba place near USC is It’s Boba Time.