the perfection of Ten Ren bubble tea

Like many with refined culinary tastes, I am a self-proclaimed bubble tea connoisseur. I have scoured the streets of numerous cities and sampled the selections of countless establishments purporting to sell the finest bubble tea in all the land, but I have come to the conclusion that only one deserves such venerable praise. Ten Ren, an international tea company with branches in all your favorite states (NY, CA, TX, MA, and even unlikely IL), features a bubble tea so magnificent it deserves an entire blog written about it.
Now, I am well aware that there do exist certain "authentic" bubble tea vendors (most likely focused in Chinatown, NY) that use real mashed fruits and brewed tea instead of colorful powders, but these places are either so shrouded in collective secrecy that no one outside of specific insular communities can find them, or so steeped in legend that their very existence is in fact questionable.
Ten Ren does use powder to create their tea, but can we blame them? Who has the time to slice, boil, and mash pounds upon pounds of taro root every day for the ingredients for but one flavor of tea? And along the same lines, what bizarre customer will find the slightly brownish off-white of this tea preferable to the intense and attractive bright purple of the taro flavor powder? I am a stickler for taste, but nevertheless I would prefer not to die choking on chunks of thick pasty taro root while trying to enjoy my bubble tea.
Ten Ren's Tea Time in Chinatown (79 Mott Street) offers a wide selection of flavors, including a number of interesting Chinese and Japanese teas that depart from the usual fruit flavors. Their specialty, as far as I'm concerned, is their tapioca. No bubble tea is complete without the bubbles, and Ten Ren delights even the most skeptically squeemish tea drinker with small, delicately sweet black pearls that positively delight the tongue. They boast a perfect consistency--melting slowly in the mouth and being chewy and soft through and through. Their size is also par to none--small enough to allow the mastication of more than a few at once, yet large enough to ensure the impossibility of accidental swallowing.
I first became aware of Ten Ren's unmatched superiority after finishing my jasmine bubble tea just two days ago. Normally, and other bubble tea fanatics may also attest, one finishes the tea before the tapioca, and then must irritatingly hunt down the bubbles amidst a regular quarry of ice cubes. Upon sucking up the last of my jasmine tea, I realized that I had finished the bubbles before the tea, and hence experienced a resounding exaltation. It was then that I finally understood the perfection of Ten Ren bubble tea.
A Flushing location exists too (135-18 Roosevelt Ave.) which has less flavors but the same great tea, along with a Brooklyn one I am not familiar with (5817 8th Ave.).
My suggestions are the taro, King's Tea 913, or jasmine. If you prefer very sweet tea, then try the lychee.