You have probably seen Vivi Bubble Tea at some point, while walking in the streets of New York: they are everywhere and, at the time I wrote this post, they have 14 locations in the city and many locations in other states. One of them in Hoboken, where they opened in 2014, serving not only bubble tea, but also ramen. We wanted to go for a while, but either went for ramen in the city, or looking for another restaurant because of the crowd. We decided to go on a Sunday, right when they opened, figuring that it would be crowded later. And we were right: we were the first, but the place started to fill up 15 minutes later.

It is an interesting place: bright, with a wall full of fake plants, probably to highlight the freshness of the ingredients they use, and, quite intriguingly, with an Eiffel tower at the counter and in the back sign...For sure, I would use the couch for a tea, but not for a ramen, dish that we wanted to try there. Yes, they serve food that, from what I saw, is not always the case in that franchise. We went for ramen rather than their rice dishes that I have to admit looked delicious.

Jodi went for the veggie miso ramen.

It was composed of kombu vegetable broth, miso tare, red onion, corn, cabbage, spinach, shiitake mushroom, corn, scallion and nori. She added ajitama that is a soft boiled egg, as well as wood ear mushrooms.

On my side, I ordered the Vivi shoyu.

The Vivi shoyu was made of a double broth (chicken and kombu), shoyu tare, chicken chashu (roasted chicken), ajitama (soft boiled egg - I did not see it, so I ordered one extra), spinach, wood ear mushroom, scallions and nori. I also asked for pork chashu (roasted pork) as an extra topping.

Both ramen were succulent: the broths were really good, tasty, especially the shoyu one. In mine, there was lots of meat that was deliciously roasted and the only regret was the presence of spinach that I did not like. But overall, there were some of the best ramen we tried. I should mention that the egg is in fact half of it, perfectly cooked to a soft yolk.

With our ramen, we got a mango bubble tea that was fairly good, and we added some tapioca, that is in the bottom on the photo, to complete the whole experience.

This was overall a good lunch at Vivi Bubble Tea and I would definitely go back there, to try some other of their Taiwanese bubble teas or even their rice dishes. There is no other ramen place in Hoboken, so it was a smart move to open such restaurant there...

Enjoy (I did)!

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Vivi Bubble Tea

117 Washington St, Hoboken, NJ 07030

Vivi Bubble Tea in Hoboken, NJ

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