Sweetheart Cafe

Favorite boba place in Berkeley/​Oakland hands down. The boba is consistently cooked perfectly, and their drinks are also good. Obviously, if you’re looking for fancy, high-​quality tea this isn’t the place to go, but in terms of great and appropriately-​priced boba this is the place to come!
Some favorites include lychee drink (like a lychee smoothie with pieces of lychee fruit in it), coconut smoothie (half-​sweetened is just as great!), and passion fruit slush.

(Sweetheart was my first boba place I ever tried at Berkeley! Coming from Texas where boba isn’t as popular, I was so happy to find a boba place literally on every corner!!)
The drinks: This is your fairly standard boba place. It’s cheap, convenient, and they have a variety of drinks. My go-​to here is usually the passionfruit green tea, which is good. One of my friends always gets the slushes saying their phenomenal/​/​the best bang for your buck, but honestly I haven’t tried the slushes yet, so no comments on my end.
The atmosphere: Come here for a drink and stay for a maybe stay for a quick chat. Honestly, this place is fairly small and noisy, so I wouldn’t really consider this the best place to study (plus there’s only ~3 tables) But the service here is fast and the spot is so close to campus/​the dorms, so I can see why sweetheart is so popular. Also, the hours here are great! I’ve definitely come here at like 11pm before after a trip to Pappy’s…

Our second stop on our Berkeley food tour, we jumped in line because at that point the line was fairly non existent.
They have an extensive menu of drinks and we decided to share a fresh fruit boba. We got the guava one and I was surprised it wasn’t slush or snow just normal juice with boba. But I thought it was perfect since it was a tad chilly out.
I wasn’t impressed with the boba but where I’m from you can’t get fresh fruit. It was a little watery but the honey boba was delicious. As a drink complementing all the food I was inhaling, it did its part.
Maybe next time I’ll try something else because I really do love boba!

First of all, let me just say that this place has crispy peppered squid – aka deep fried octopus, the best thing alive. And by alive, I mean the amazing feeling I get when I eat it.
As much as I would love to come here just for that, I have to say the green milk tea that I had was one of the worse ones. It wasn’t untouchable. It just tasted watered down, but that might have been because I didn’t get boba to balance the sweetness. Either way this place is at least pretty cheap and satisfying – ~$ 7 for a milk tea and a snack?!
3 for shabby milk teas but the guilty pleasures of deep fried octopus.

I really really liked this place. I go to UC Berkeley. It’s open late, it’s close, the boba is sweet, and the tea is yummy.
Today I got my usual large black milk tea with boba. I was almost to the very end of it when my mouth detected something that was neither tea nor boba. I drank the tea so it wouldn’t spill out of my mouth onto everything but opened my mouth to retrieve the foreign object.
It was a bug. A dead bug was in my mouth. From the boba.
I really liked this place and I understand that things like this happen, but to be completely honest, I worked at In-​N-​Out before this, and I’m less understanding as to how this happens because we are so uptight about the quality of our product. I understand that things like this happen, but I am disgusted and will not be coming back.

Sweetheart Café is my second favorite place in Berkeley for boba because their boba teas are the more affordable of the many boba places in Berkeley, and their boba is simply delicious! Boba, which is made from tapioca through a special heating process, can be incredibly difficult to execute well, and Sweetheart Café does it well. The boba is soft and chewy and of a perfect size. My favorite tea drink to get from Sweetheart Café is the passion fruit green tea with boba because it has a sweet tangy taste that is really refreshing, especially on those hot Berkeley days. I’ve also tried the vanilla green milk tea, which is also delicious. Sweetheart Café is a must for me when I’m in Berkeley.

I used to love sweetheart café, it was my favorite boba place in Berkeley, however it’s not even my top 5 anymore. Their boba have been too mushy the past few times I came, in addition, I feel like the price keeps going up too.
If I’m going to end up paying like $ 4 or so, I would rather take a trip to share tea than sweetheart. That being said, I’ll probably continue coming here since it’s so conveniently located & I still really like their vanilla great milk tea. Also despite the crazy greasiness of their popcorn chicken, it’s still yummy.

My favorite flavor strawberry comes in at about $ 2 while being decent in flavor and chewy boba.