Hillcrest boba station open on Fifth Ave

Does anyone remember when “bubble tea” was the new hotness? The raging popularity of milk tea loaded with swollen tapioca balls created a niche market overnight, and opened the gate for a bubble bubble, so to speak, and the overvalued boba houses came and went like 17th-century Dutch tulips!

Okay, maybe that’s hyperbolic, but it’s still a surprise to see a new boba tea house, Trinitea Tea, open in the high-rent real estate along 5th Avenue in Hillcrest. This would be the business’s second location, with the original still open on Navajo Road.

Perhaps the secret to their success is the full gallery of Mexican Thomas Kinkade knockoffs displayed inside?!

Brown sugar milk tea ($3.49 for a “grande,” $3.99 for a “venti”) is well and good, not to mention sweet enough to inspire immediate tooth brushing, but it’s the bucolic cottage scenes on the wall — interspersed with the occasional “Winslow Homer on Valium” sailing ship — that give Trinitea its edge.