San Jose’s Late-Night Boba Shop Is a One-of-a-Kind Experience

The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.

Before my first visit to San Jose’s Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge, I had never gone out for boba past 11 o’clock — never even knew that was an option, really, when even boba shops in Taipei mostly call it a night by 8 p.m.

So when I walked into this little storefront in the Vietnam Town shopping complex on a recent Friday night, I had to take a minute to let it all soak in. The vibey lights bathing the shop in a dim neon purple. The groups of Asian Zoomers and younger Millennials lounging in leather booths. The pastel-hued digital menu board with its vaguely (and not-so-vaguely) inappropriate drink names: the Pop Her Cherry, the PMS (Please Make Sweet), the Don’t Be a Hater and, unbelievably, the Lil Pee Pee.

The shop is open until 2 a.m. every night, and yes, I do believe that was a red Porsche parked right out front.

When all was said and done, we’d paid $50 (!) for a dessert and two drinks, including one called the “Boba Virgin.” Was it worth it? Your mileage may vary, but at the end of a very, very long night, we couldn’t stop laughing at the ballsiness of the place, and how we’d just taken part in a truly only-in-San-Jose experience.

Indeed, few people embody the Vietnam Town mall’s boot-strappy, go-big-or-go-home ethic better than Sweet Gelato’s owner, who introduces himself as Tony. A trim, energetic older Vietnamese man with salt-and-pepper hair, Tony runs the shop by sheer force of his personality. As soon as we walk in, he pulls us over, gesturing toward the menu, and says, “Forget about this. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t like your drink, you don’t pay. Simple as that.”

Never mind that we’re already willing customers standing in line to order drinks. Tony holds up his phone to show us an article listing Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge as one of the top boba shops in San Jose. He pulls up the shop’s Yelp page. “Look at how many reviews,” he says. (There are more than 2,000, for what it’s worth.)

What Tony likes to do, it seems, is to play boba sommelier, insisting that we not waste our time perusing the menu and instead just let him pick out something we’ll like based on our preferences. Do we like smoothies? Milk teas? Something fruity? How do we feel about strawberries? What about dragon fruit?

For someone like me, who’s prone to analyzing a menu for upwards of 10 minutes to engineer the ideal order, giving up control in this way feels more than a little bit stressful. But Tony seems so fired up about the dragon fruit that I warm up to the idea. And that’s how I wind up ordering the Boba Virgin, a vaguely tropical concoction of dragon fruit, pomegranate, basil seeds and both popping boba and the regular tapioca-based variety.

Tony decides to narrate my first sip. “Look at his face,” he says with palpable excitement. “Look at his face!” The drink is a bit sweet for my taste and doesn’t have any discernible tea flavor, but I feel too bad about letting Tony down to do anything but nod enthusiastically.

We also order a durian smoothie with boba, which costs $18 all by itself, and I’ve never seen anyone make a smoothie with as much vigor as Tony, putting his whole back and shoulders into it as he stirs with a spatula.

My biggest piece of advice? Don’t come to Sweet Gelato unprepared, or you’ll be steamrolled by the force of Tony’s charisma and salesmanship. This man could sell me any car in the used car lot. If he sold vacation packages, I’d wind up letting him send me anywhere in the world, via a mode of transportation of his own choosing. We asked one tentative question about the shop’s gelato and other dessert offerings, and before we knew what was happening, he’d taken out two spoons, offered us a taste of tiramisu, and closed the sale.

Were the drinks amazing enough to merit the highest prices I’ve ever encountered in a boba shop? I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder. The durian smoothie was delicious, rich and super-buttery, and loaded with the fruit’s characteristically bold, pungent flavor. Like Tony promised, it was made with 100% real fresh durian, and it showed.

Really, though, I think the reason the shop has garnered such a cult following (and near-perfect Yelp rating) has more to do with the shop’s odd quirks and Tony’s unique style of hospitality. A piece of paper taped to the display case previews not new drinks but simply new drink names that he’s planning to release in the future. (A sample: LIFE (Living It Fiercely Everyday)”) And, in its own way, the entire process of ordering a drink and watching Tony make it (and then watching him watch you drink it!) is a kind of show in and of itself.

I haven’t encountered anything else like it in 30-plus years of boba drinking.

Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge is open 5 p.m.–2 a.m. daily at 972 Green St. Unit 7084 in San Jose.