Don’t be fooled: Rice balls aren’t simply balls of rice.
The Japanese snack also known as onigiri consists of white rice formed into triangles or spheres, stuffed with filling and wrapped with nori (seaweed). If you’ve ever had a sushi hand roll, it’s not far off — though they don’t feature rice made with salt, sugar and vinegar like sushi does.
Rice balls are the main attraction at Yaya Tea, a bubble tea and onigiri cafe chain with locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Yaya opened its first Garden State location at the end of August. The shop serves up a vast menu of customizable teas as well as a variety of rice balls filled with everything from chicken to Spam, crawfish and octopus.
The cafe is located in Newark’s University Heights neighborhood, not far from the campuses of NJIT, Rutgers-Newark and Essex County College. While rice balls may not be synonymous with college cuisine like pizza or Rutgers fat sandwiches, the shop was plenty busy when we swung by on Tuesday.
“For a while, our partners wanted to open our next location in New Jersey to expand outside of New York City,” Maggie Kwong, a managing member at Yaya Tea, told NJ Advance Media. “We’ve debated a couple of different towns but chose Newark to immerse ourselves in its bustling college and business scene.”
Their tea menu (prices range from $3.25 to $4.75 depending on size and type) is so vast it can be overwhelming. If you’re looking for the classic bubble tea experience, go with sweet and creamy milk teas featuring classic flavors like Thai tea, taro and matcha. Want to focus on the flavor? Their fruit teas, which come in combinations like strawberry, blueberry and lychee or green apple and kiwi are less sweet. All their teas are customizable, from sweetness level to the type of bubbles in the tea. Tapioca pearls are the classic, but they have popping mango bubbles and aloe vera jelly as well.
The "Blue Blood" from Yaya Tea in Newark, featuring strawberry, blueberry and lychee tea with tapioca pearls. (Jeremy Schneider | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
The “Blue Blood,” with strawberry, blueberry and lychee, was flavorful — the blueberry came through strongest — without being too sweet, and had enough tapioca bubbles to satisfy any bubble tea fanatic.
Yaya Tea’s rice balls (priced between $2 and $5 depending on filling and size) were just as impressive, each fresh and made to order. They feature more than a dozen types of rice balls, almost all of them including seafood. The Yaya chicken ball — filled with teriyaki chicken and seaweed — was tasty. The shrimp tempura ball (pictured atop the story), aesthetically pleasing with its shrimp tails popping out at the top of the rice, is sure to be a favorite, especially if you’re a fried shrimp fan.
A Yaya chicken rice ball from Yaya Tea in Newark. (Jeremy Schneider | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
The spicy crawfish intrigued me — I associate crawfish with jambalaya, not Japanese food — but it basically tasted like a spicier and more robust shrimp, with a more tender texture (it wasn’t fried).
Yaya Tea’s menu will eventually expand to feature noodle entrees, and they’re already selling Japanese candies and snacks (sea salt Kit Kat bars, seaweed Lays potato chips and lychee gummies are among their offerings).
Assorted Japanese snacks and candy at Yaya Tea in Newark. (Jeremy Schneider | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
Yaya Tea isn’t the first New York chain to try to make it in New Jersey, and it certainly won’t be the last. But it brings a sense of international culture and flavor that many others lack. Their menu may seem daunting, but it’s worth trying even if it doesn’t seem like your cup of bubble tea.
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Jeremy Schneider may be reached at jschneider@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
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