There seems to be an infinite number of tea houses, stalls, and store chains in Taipei, making it almost impossible to keep track of the best places to get your tea fix. It’s common to have a go-to neighbourhood tea place and city-wide favourite (or two), and for the most part we’re guilty of looking no further than the handful of tea shops that we regularly frequent. That being said, one tea shop in particular has been catching our eye for a while: NUTTEA, a tea store specializing in vegan teas made with nut milk and cream. We’d tracked their rise in popularity on Instagram for a while, but it wasn’t until a friend of ours strongly recommended it to us that we decided we had to try it out for ourselves.

NUTTEA has a decent selection of vegan teas — with or without nut milk — and we felt a little overwhelmed when it came to choosing our first. Luckily, the staff member we spoke to was extremely kind and helpful and recommended we choose the two drinks below, which are some of their most popular items.

The first drink we chose was the dragon fruit nut mylk ($90). We wish we could tell you that we ordered this because we love dragonfruit, but we 100% chose it based on its vibrant colour and how cool it sounded. This turned out to be very tasty, made with dragon fruit pureed with a blend macadamia nuts, cashew, and walnut milk, and a thick cream made from macadamia nuts, cashews, walnuts and hazelnuts. It was rich yet rather refreshing, and the cream top was absolutely phenomenal. We don’t normally rate dragonfruit very highly as a flavour — and perhaps we would have enjoyed this even more if it had been made with a different fruit — but this drink hit the spot.

The second drink we ordered was the Earl Grey tea with chocolate nut cream ($90), and it was sensational, better than the first by a mile. This was made with fragrant Earl Grey tea and the same blend of nut milk as above, topped with a rich chocolate cream made with cocoa, macadamia milk, hazelnut milk, cashew milk, and walnut milk, finished with a generous dusting of heavy cacao powder. It’s hard to put into words how amazing this drink was. The tea base was nice and light, making it extremely drinkable and refreshing. On the other hand, the cream was obscenely thick and rich, with the most delicious chocolatey, nutty flavour imaginable. We will say that if you don’t love chocolate as much as we do, this might be a little too much for you — but if you’re a chocolate lover we can almost guarantee you’ll love it.

Check out the rest of their delicious menu down below:

After our visit, we were left feeling extremely impressed with NUTTEA. We weren’t sure what to expect from nut milk tea, but in the end we were totally sold. We loved the way it kept drinks nice and light without compromising on flavour or texture — in fact, we felt like we preferred it to regular milk! One thing we felt would make NUTTEA drinks better is if you could add some extra toppings like brown sugar pearls or some kind of jelly — but our drinks were rich and flavourful enough that doing so might have been overkill. What we can say for sure is, whether or not you’re vegan or actively trying to avoid dairy in your life, this place does some fantastic drinks that are well worth a try.

What’s the vibe?

Modern tea shop that specializes in nut milk drinks. Customers aren’t always vegan — plenty come out of sheer curiosity and come back because everything is so darn good.

Worth it?

Considering the high quality ingredients and delicious flavours, absolutely!

Would you go back?

Definitely — we can’t stop thinking about that Earl Grey tea drink!