This is not a love story. Now that I’ve made that claim, I would like to say I do have a very special place in my heart for Thai ice tea. This is how that love took root.
When I was a child growing up in the Bay Area, it would be an expedition to hunt down a Thai ice tea for my mom. She wasn’t picky, I don’t think I ever heard her mutter an ill word about her drink but the one requirement was that it be very light on the ice. To be more plain, we’re talking about two lone ice cubes clinking around in the drink. I had to specify this countless times to the hostess or barista when I was the one sent out to retrieve the drink.
Then when I was a teenager galavanting the streets of San Francisco with my mom, it became our thing. We would pop into any Thai restaurant we set our eyes on and ask if they served this treasured drink. When we struck gold, we would leave that restaurant giddy, clutching our large styrofoam cups with the two ice cubes clinking about and take satisfied gulps of the sweet creamy goodness.
It’s incredible how something so seemingly small and insignificant can carry so much nostalgia and weight. I am a creative and adventurous person, I enjoy problem solving, thinking outside of the box and trying new recipes but in cases of some things, like the Thai ice tea, it’s something I have come to prefer to revere as a special experience, that treat collected at a restaurant or cafe that will always make me think of my mom and our adventures together. Since going vegan over six years ago, I have been in the hunt of finding places that can recreate this drink to my current standards. I have found six places out here in LA thus far and have dragged my mom to a few of them. We continue to make memories and revisit the old ones too.