Frankly is gone — and Milan’s bubble tea has never been better.
Bubble tea — boba, if you grew up saying it that way — is the Taiwanese drink that quietly conquered the planet starting in the 1980s. The formula is simple enough: green or black tea, milk or fruit, sugar to taste. The whole thing lives or dies on the pearls — those black tapioca spheres with the chewy, slightly resistant bite the Taiwanese call QQ. Get the pearls wrong and it’s just sweet tea. Get them right and you understand why people queue.
Milan has taken the drink seriously. When Frankly, the big Italo-Chinese chain, closed all six of its locations earlier this year (a genuine loss), it was tempting to read it as the beginning of the end for boba in the city. It was the opposite. The gap filled almost immediately — partly with homegrown shops, partly with heavyweight chains flying in straight from Taiwan and mainland China, recipes intact. Milan didn’t lose its bubble tea. It traded up.
Here’s where to drink it.
Laankee Hong Kong Milk Tea
Via Paolo Sarpi 2, Milano — Zona Sarpi
Google Maps · Instagram: @laankee_bubbletea
Laankee started small in the side streets of Sarpi and earned its way to a corner-front spot on the main drag. The specialty is Hong Kong–style milk tea — the strong, slightly bitter, evaporated-milk kind that traces back to the city’s cha chaan teng diners, engineered to cut through a heavy lunch. Order it, but don’t stop there: the bubble waffles (egg waffles, gai daan jai) are the real reason to sit down. Milk tea and a warm egg waffle is Hong Kong afternoon tea in its purest, most portable form.
The Alley
Via Paolo Sarpi 6, Milano — Zona Sarpi
Google Maps · Instagram: @thealley.italy
A Taiwanese institution, founded in 2013 and now past 440 stores worldwide, known for its hand-brewed brown sugar “Deerioca” pearls and a serious fruit-tea lineup. In Milan they run two locations: the original in Chinatown and a newer, design-forward space on Via Torino, steps from the Duomo. If you want to know what the global bubble-tea standard tastes like before the copies got to it, start here.
CoCo Bubble Tea
Via Paolo Sarpi 10, Milano — Zona Sarpi
Google Maps · Website: coco-tea.com
Founded in Taiwan in 1997, CoCo is one of the originals that turned boba into a global format — over 5,000 stores and counting. The move here is the 3 Brothers Milk Tea: milk tea loaded with three toppings, tapioca pearls, pudding and grass jelly, which is roughly as much texture as one cup can legally hold. Watch for the seasonal releases too; they’re usually limited-run and built to be photographed.
Mocano – Fruit & Bubble Tea
Via Paolo Sarpi 17, Milano — Zona Sarpi
Google Maps · Website: mocanobubbletea.it
Second location: Corso Buenos Aires 1, Porta Venezia
Mocano leans on fresh fruit teas rather than the heavier milk-tea end, and it has the one thing almost no boba shop in Milan offers: room. Three floors and actual seating, which turns a takeaway drink into somewhere to sit for an hour. The rare bubble tea spot you go to rather than walk past.
Chabaidao (ChaPanda)
Via Paolo Sarpi 13, Milano — Zona Sarpi
Google Maps · Website: chabaidao.com
Known internationally as ChaPanda, this is one of mainland China’s top-tier chains — founded in Chengdu in 2008 and now past 8,000 stores, a scale that makes most Western chains look like pop-ups. Its Milan arrival landed instantly with the city’s Chinese student crowd, who tend to be the most exacting audience a bubble tea shop can face. When they show up, it means the recipe survived the trip.
QQTea Taiwan
Via Paolo Sarpi 47, Milano — Zona Sarpi
Google Maps · Instagram: @qqtea_taiwan
Second location: Porta Venezia
A Milanese staple that locals defend with real loyalty, with a second outpost in Porta Venezia. The name is the giveaway: QQ is the Taiwanese term for that bouncy, springy, perfectly-cooked pearl texture — the exact thing every shop on this list is chasing. Here it’s the whole point, and it delivers.
Have you tried any of these spots yet? Let us know your opinion, and do not forget to bookmark chinatownmilano.it for more Asian food stories, restaurant guides, and hidden spots around the city and follow us on social media @chinatownmilano.it.
