The Alley Luxe Serves Bakery Brera's Famed Cruffins With Its Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Drinks

Launched in Taipei in 2013 by Taiwanese graphic designer and entrepreneur Chiu Mao-Ting, The Alley is not a bubble tea store per se: in fact, their signature drink is very simply a combination of fresh milk served with a generous scoop of tapioca pearls slow-cooked in brown sugar syrup. Incidentally, the brand was originally named Diagon Alley, after the landmark in Harry Potter stories (yes, the owner is a fan boy).

It was later changed to The Alley because Chiu (above) didn’t want the brand to be, er, stereotyped. In an interview with a business publication from China, he reveals that the deer logo designed by him was chosen because it’s “a gentle and likeable creature... that appeals to the ladies”. Hmm, isn’t the deer famously known as Harry Potter’s patronus? Anyhow, the brand quickly gained popularity for its brown sugar “Deerioca”, which are tapioca pearls made from scratch in Taiwan, then cooked in house-made brown sugar syrup at each store over a two-hour long process. Of course, being super photogenic in their curved bottom cups certainly helped spread the popularity of the brand's drinks. The Alley has since grown into a global name with some 300 locations spread across Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. The brand’s rapid expansion has made some call it the “Starbucks of the East”.

The opening of The Alley Luxe @ Cineleisure — hot on the heels of the opening of their kiosk at Jewel Changi Airport — signifies a new chapter in the brand’s development. Billed as the brand’s first “premium lifestyle café concept” in the world, as the only one with a food menu, it offers not just a showcase of their popular beverages, but is also the first in the world to serve a menu of European pastries and also a collection of branded merchandise, from plush deer heads to tumblers and phone covers.

On the menu are seven drinks: two from the Brown Sugar Deerioca series (fresh milk or fresh milk with matcha); four tea concoctions, and one from their bottle Aurora series. Accompanying this is a selection of pastries spanning superbly laminated cruffins and croissants, beautifully shaped koign-ammans and tender scones. There wasn’t a physical menu for the bites when we visited during the preview, though.

The 30-seater takes over the unit previously occupied by Japanese pasta and pizza joint Shokudo, and is a lovely light-drenched space perfect for taking food shots and flattering selfies. And while the brand’s most loyal customers are teenagers and millennials, the café is very serious about projecting the “luxe” element of the café: think black marble tables and pastries served on gilded plates. We figure this chic look will probably appeal to the OLs in the area too. This is quite different from the more industrial decor of its other outlets.

If you are wondering why the brand has chosen to open this new concept outlet in a new market: the Singaporean franchisee has a role to play in the creation of the concept. 28-year-old Charlie Tan (above right, with his sis who's the ops manager here) fell in love with The Alley after having his first taste of the Brown Sugar Deerioca Fresh Milk in Taiwan, and decided to join a heated multi-way bid to bring the brand to Singapore. Despite having no experience in the F&B industry, Charlie — who used to run his own business in the recruitment industry — won the bid (“with a 150-page deck!”) and started working on it at fire-speed. He also has an Indonesian partner. The idea of The Alley Luxe was brought up during lunch with Chiu Mao-Ting while they were talking about how to kick start The Alley in Singapore. “We then came up with the idea of a premium version since Singapore is the hub of Asia,” says Charlie. “This outlet will set the benchmark for all other Alley Luxe outlets.”

Charlie reveals that they are looking to open about 15 to 20 locations across the island within the next two to three years, all operated by themselves in order to ensure quality control. “Looking at the number of outlets some of the top bubble tea brands have in Singapore, we think it is sustainable,” says Charlie. Subsequently they will also be setting up an R&D team in Singapore also, and there are plans to develop unique drinks for the Singapore market.​​​​​​​

If you are wondering about the emphasis this global brand is putting on our tiny market, know this: their Jewel Changi Airport outlet (above) hit the record sales of over 2,200 cups daily since opening a month ago. Most countries only break the 1,000 mark daily, with only big cities in China hitting the same level of sales here. Yes, Singaporeans are very willing to spend on Instagrammable drinks.​​​​​​​

However, there is more to The Alley’s concoctions than good looks. According to Charlie, every drink is designed for optimal enjoyment within the next five to 10 minutes. He is as serious about this as stern sushi masters with a 30-second makan rule, and forbid us from sampling the drinks after photography because we had passed the 10 minute mark. “The pearls would harden from the cold of the ice,” he explains.

Back to those pearls: made exclusively in Taiwan, the raw pearls are shipped to Alley outlets worldwide, and cooked on-site through a two-hour-long process of boiling in water to cook, simmering in low heat, resting, and constant tossing in brown sugar to allow each pearl to be fully infused with the honeyed notes of a house-made brown sugar syrup. According to operations manager and also Charlie’s elder sister Rashelle (who was an early childhood teacher in Australia with no prior F&B experience), the brand is also particular about their teas, using only high quality tea leaves sourced from Taiwan. Rashelle also reveals that each drink takes about 15 minutes to prepare from the point of ordering, and The Alley’s service staff are required to go through 10 days of training before they are allowed to prepare the drinks.

This signature drink is so simple yet so satisfying: chilled fresh milk (premium standard Deluxe Milk from Meiji Thailand, licensed and graded by Japan), served with a huge scoop of warm 'Deerioca' pearls dripping with brown sugar. The warm orbs are a joy to munch on with their super QQ texture, and infused with brown sugar flavours that, surprisingly, isn’t too cloying and pretty balanced. Though The Alley’s representatives insist that we taste the drinks freshly prepared — saying that the pearls harden as they cool down — they actually tasted perfectly fine even after 15 minutes, with the pearls remaining nicely chewy. So easy to drink (similar to Tiger Sugar's version) that we slurped up what was probably our day’s recommended intake of sugar and carbs in double quick time without realising it.

Just to give Easties a reason to go down to Orchard Road, they’ve put a couple of drinks that are available only at the Cineleisure outlet, including this from the new 'Lulu fresh fruit' series. Three to four fresh strawberries (weighing a total of about 40g) are crushed to form the base and then layered with strawberry jam, a light peach oolong tea, and topped with a layer of “snow velvet”, which is a foam made from hand-beaten cream cheese. While it didn’t quite have the natural tartness of the fresh fruit we were hoping for, it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet either. Combined with the mild cheese foam, it tasted almost like a very light strawberry milkshake, which is not a bad thing, except that one almost forgets that there is actually tea in this.

Another offering available only at the Cineleisure outlet. The base is brewed from assam black tea sourced from Taiwan (the same used in their popular signature Royal No.9 Milk Tea), and layered with sweet cream, topped with a coat of Oreo crumbs to mimic “soil” and garnished with mint leaves to make the cup resemble a potted plant, of sorts. We appreciate the fact that one can have this with zero added sugar (because, honestly, the brown sugar coated on the pearls are more than enough to sweeten a drink), but the Oreo crumbs and those baby mint leaves don’t seem to contribute meaningfully to the blend, apart from making it look cute. We'll stick to the No. 9, which is quite yum as a naicha.

The official website describes the Aurora bottled series as “inspired by the stunning beauty of nature,” and the Northern Lights concoction “showcases the captivating colours of the Aurora Borealis,” and “lets you hold a piece of it in your hands.”

It’s all very well and good — and this ice-blended drink layered with apple cider, grape concentrate, and butterfly pea tea and bottled a la minute, is really quite a sight to behold. However, it tastes like a flat Fanta Grape slushie, and our photographer was practically bouncing off the walls after two sips of this. Strictly for the incurably sweet-toothed.

The Alley Luxe is the first in the world to offer bakes alongside their drinks in a chic café setting, and on the menu are a mix of sweet and savoury items, spanning four types of cruffins (lemon, chocolate, salted caramel and kaya) to sausage croissants. At press time, The Alley representatives still aren’t officially naming their bakery partner, but they look a lot like the stuff from the famed Bakery Brera and taste exactly like the stuff from Bakery Brera.

Heck, Thrina Chan — co-owner of Bakery Brera — is even standing behind the counter during our visit, making sure that her pastries are heated up right. Even though there’s limited space at the café, the wares are actually proofed and baked on location, and are super fresh.

The Lemon Curd Cruffin, with its slight tang, and dreamily buttery, shatteringly crisp pastry, serves as a lovely complement to the sweet, milky drinks.

So do the savoury items such as the Savoury Sausage Cheese Croissant stuffed with a plump Johnsonville smoked bratwurst with mozzarella and cheddar cheese. Did we mention Brera's plain croissant, all flaky, crispy, buttery and light, is probably our favourite ever croissant in Singapore?

This tender cheese scone is yum scrum, too. We’ve always been huge fans of Brera's bakes and frankly, their presence at The Alley is actually giving us — and perhaps those who aren't crazy about brown sugar pearl drinks — a compelling reason to visit this conveniently-located Orchard Road café.

We can easily see — and taste — the appeal of The Alley’s drinks, thanks to their comfortingly warm, deliciously QQ brown sugar-infused tapioca pearls. The drinks are definitely on the sweet side, but clearly this isn’t an issue with folks happy to queue for an hour at the Jewel Changi outlet. Having Brera supply their bakes at this Orchard branch is an excellent idea, and given the airy lightness of the sit-down space here, we’d be happy to return for a bite and a cup of no-sugar-added tea. However, we aren’t sure how pleasant it'd be to lounge here when the inevitable crowd of millennials descend on this space.

The Alley Luxe is at #02-06A/B Orchard Cineleisure Level 2 S239695. Open daily noon – 10pm (after grand opening at 1pm on 18 May). Last orders at 9.30pm. www.the-alley.sg.

Photos: Alvin Teo/8 DAYS; Yip Jieying