Shiny Tea is closing

I have sad news to share: Shiny Tea on the Upper West Side (UWS) is closing at the end of this month. When I used to live on the UWS, it was my go-to boba shop, and I was one of their regulars. Within about 2-3 months of me moving into the area, the person who took my order started simply asking me, "You want your usual?"

I had a Friday evening routine of walking through Riverside Park, passing General Grant's Tomb, picking up Chinese food near Columbia and then finally grabbing my jasmine green milk tea with boba from Shiny Tea on my way home.

This is not a review, I'll do that next week. I just wanted to spread the word so people can visit it themselves before it closes. It's located on Broadway, between 101st and 102nd streets, near the 1 train's 103rd Street stop. If you don't mind walking a few minutes, the 96th Street station has 2 and 3 service as well.

Be careful, Shiny Tea is really easy to miss, it's basically the width of a closet:

It's the smallest boba shop I've ever seen, there's not even enough room for multiple people to wait in line to order drinks!

I rarely go there now that I live in Queens, but last week I had an appointment on the UWS, so I stopped by. Even though I moved out of the neighborhood basically a year ago, he still recognized me and commented that it had been a while since he'd seen me.

After a bit of catchup, he broke the bad news: the owner of Shiny Tea was not interested in renewing the lease, so it would be closing. It was a gut punch for me, so despite getting my regular order, I didn't really feel like doing a formal review.

I highly recommend stopping by in the next week if you're in the area, it will be worth it!