Sydney has more bubble tea per block than almost any city outside Asia, and nobody has ranked it properly. So here it is: the official hungr tier list. Shops are drawn from Time Out's Sydney bubble tea guide and Broadsheet's reporting. Fight me in the comments.

S tier · book the trip

Bubble Nini · Chippendale, Haymarket, Zetland and CBD. The only shop on this list that both Time Out and Broadsheet single out. Tapioca pearls, jellies and flavourings all made in-house, with small-batch pearls in flavours like sakura blossom and taro. A short curated menu instead of a wall of options, and it shows.

Xing Fu Tang · Haymarket and CBD. The brown sugar boba benchmark. The tiger milk tea arrives swirled in stripes of sugar and syrup, and the pearls are cooked in front of you.

A tier · cross the suburb line

The Alley Lujiaoxiang · Bankstown. The brown sugar deerioca, with handcrafted tapioca balls in the shop's own sugar cane syrup recipe.

Yifang Taiwan Fruit Tea · Eastwood. Fresh fruit tea with real fruit pieces and a pineapple jam made to a hundred-year-old recipe.

No Fail · Kensington. The indie one. Cheese fruit tea frappes with real fruit pulp and ratios that actually balance.

Beautea · Chatswood. The peach oolong teaccino with handmade sweet potato balls soaked in coconut sugar syrup.

Tea Republic · Mascot. An extensive menu of proper tea bases: sticky rice, roasted almond kernel and da hong pao among them.

B tier · reliable anywhere

Gong Cha · everywhere. Seventy-five locations and counting. The royal pearl milk tea never lets you down, and that consistency is the whole point.

Coco · everywhere. Strong black tea aroma and soft chewy pearls. The safe order in any food court in the country.

Tiers move as verdicts come in. The app carries the live leaderboard, ranked by people who actually went.