Tirol Chocolate – Retro Tiramisu & Bubble Tea

Next in line of the series of “retro” flavours that Tirol is going after, is bubble tea and tiramisu. This apparently was two big items between 1989 to 2019. While not quite as expansive in the sheer volume of years it covers, admittedly we did see things move progressively faster in those more recent years, especially the closer to modern times we get. It always struck me as one of those things that keeps accelerating, and only gets faster the further along we are.

Does anyone else remember those giant handset phones that were the first generation of mobile phones? Sadly, I do. My first mobile phone was the first Motorola model, and was lovingly referred to as the turtle. That thing doubled as a murder weapon…Regardless of phone size, one thing we can all agree on is it was certainly a magical time when people were still figuring out the ideal form factor in phones. I don’t know that a similar problem plagued the food scene though, as tiramisu and bubble tea have a general formula that everyone follows.

While I can’t speak to the boom of tiramisu in Japan, I can say that I witnessed the boom of bubble tea as a phenomenon in Japan back in 2019. It was a bit of a shock to me that it took that long to gain traction in Japan, when the rest of East Asia was already well into the mature years when it came to bubble tea adoption. Interestingly enough, a friend that visited Japan recently said there weren’t too many bubble tea places, so I guess the fad died as quickly as it came.

I am yet again blown away by the 8 piece package here, I’m hoping the trend continues. The package smells very heavily of caffeine, by which I mean tea and coffee.

The bubble tea flavour is really just a block of black tea flavoured bubble milk tea with small balls of tapioca in them. Fairly straight forward in terms of flavour and texture.

Texture is mildly interesting but nothing to write home about. It’s a solid block of chocolate with little bits of tapioca in the center to give it a chewiness to it. Thinking about the evolution of bubble tea now, I wonder how many people still enjoy the tapioca versus other toppings like pudding, or jelly and the like.

The flavour is fairly strong and if you like actual classic bubble tea with the black tea base, this is pretty solid. I tend to enjoy the flavour, so while nothing spectacular, it does what it sets out to and I give it points for that.

The tiramisu is also just a solid block of chocolate – this one seems to have three layers to it. Predominantly though, you really will only be able to taste the chocolate and coffee flavours. If those are two flavours you enjoy, congrats because this is swimming in it.

Honestly though, I wouldn’t be able to tell this apart from Tirol’s classic coffee flavour. The texture is again nothing special since it’s quite literally just a brick of chocolate.

The bubble tea flavour is identical to the one I reviewed back in the day, incidentally when bubble tea was all the rage in Japan. I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy it now. I would do it again, but I can’t say I’m a big coffee fan, so my enjoyment of the bubble tea isn’t enough to override my disinterest in the tiramisu. Yet another mix where I am 50/50 on it.