Don't judge a dessert by its name. If you love bubble tea for the pearls or herbal jelly/mesona jelly (more or less the same thing to me) for the pearls/jelly more than the tea, then Blackball is the perfect dessert for you. Hailing from Taiwan (land of bubble tea and all other good snacks) - it's rather new and has 2 outlets in the west - one in Star Vista and the other one in Clementi Central.
Their signature dessert is the 'Blackball Signature' $4.90 (such an inspiring name, but I suppose it's in Chinese) - which comes in 4 different temperature variations from icy (the only one I've tried), cold, warm and hot. I really can't imagine eating this dessert hot - but the icy one is awesome because the shaved ice is super fine and has the texture of snow rather than shaved ice.
It comes with their grass jelly (very nice texture, like gong cha's herbal jelly) which I find a bit too sweet, chewy pearls (tried it twice - the texture has been very consistent), and some weird other toppings. The orange squares on the top are sweet potato balls (my fave - texture is just like tang yuan or ondeh ondeh), the purplish cubes are yam balls (I prefer the texture of the yam balls to the yam sticks), yam sticks (they call it yam Q - it has a firmer texture than the yam balls) and golden sweet potato (the yellow ones, texture is in between the sweet potato balls and the yam Q). There's also some red bean which I don't like. Not to say that the red bean isn't good - just that I don't like red bean very much.
I also tried the grass jelly and fresh milk - it's as good as gong cha's!
I'm sure that this dish is high in carbohydrates and sugar >,< but it tastes really good, especially with that artery clogging creamer! They'll serve the creamer separate but it tastes much better with creamer. When I first went to Blackball - I got really confused between all the desserts and decided to settle for the signature cos I wanted to try a bit of everything. If I'm not wrong if you choose cold instead of icy you get a bit more grass jelly - but the shaved ice is really good and makes everything nice and cool. Perhaps I found it harder to understand what was on the menu because most of the displays had lots of Chinese words (which I take ten thousand years to read). Anyhow, if it's your first time here I suggest you just get the signature dessert.
Short update cos it's late and I need to zzz but I've been told to update more - hope it makes the day a bit more interesting ;p
Blackball
The Star Vista
#02-14/15 (walk towards the MRT - its' just at the connection between Star Vista and the MRT)
Blackball website
