The name of this drink was a head-scratcher, but in essence, it seems to be a normal coconut latte, except that it has whipped cheese cream with it. It was the combination of coconut milk and cheese cream that I found interesting enough to try.
Other than that, as you can see in the picture, it does come in a very beautiful pastel blue colour, which is apparently completely naturally derived from spirulina. It is this colour that the drink is named after, although I don't understand the "ming" reference.
The other thing to note is that although the in-app description says that it is topped with rich whipped cream cheese, you can clearly see in the picture that the top of the cup is brown with no apparent whitish topping, but that there seems to be a patch of thick white cream right at the bottom of the cup (around to bottom 0.5-1cm). There does seem to be little blotches of whitish stuff all the way down, most prominently in the top brown coffee part due to the contrast. So I am guessing that either this was more of a clumpy cheese foam that quickly sank down to the bottom of the cup despite being sprayed on top, or else they just scooped it and plonked it in so it didn't even get a chance to float. I took the picture very soon after the drink was ready for collection, probably within 10 minutes.
With that out of the way, on to the taste review. The overall summary is that it is like the coconut milk version of their Mascarpone Latte. I believe due to the nature of their coconut milk blend, it was overall a bit sweeter and richer or creamier in taste compared to the mascarpone latte, with a mild nutty tropical coconut flavour.
There was a cheese flavour, but it competed with the coconut flavour, so it did not clearly strike me as distinct and clearly cheese like in the Mascarpone Latte. No nacho cheese notes for example. Nonetheless, it was present as a mild cream cheese fullness.
From their other coconut milk drinks, their coconut milk does tend to be significantly sweeter than their plain milk offerings, and it is also reflected in the percentage of sugar in their Nutrigrade labels. So this was in line with that. As such, it was a tad too sweet to me despite it being the "least sweet" option, and they did not have any other sugar option.
What I did like, was that it was also saltier than the mascarpone latte, as I believe their coconut milk also has a bit of salt in it compared to plain cow milk.
All these combined with the darkness of the coffee, made the drink somewhat reminiscent of a gula melaka coconut milk drink or an Ondeh Ondeh Latte but cheesecake version, with the coffee paralleling the burnt caramel taste of the gula melaka, and with the salt from the cheese and coconut milk paralleling the salt normally added to the gula melaka. So the coffee taste was not very distinct to me, and came across more as a darker version of gula melaka.
Overall, it is a very rich and sweet drink in my opinion, so do be warned of that. But it is a very nice dessert drink and is like a cross between a Mascarpone Latte and ondeh ondeh latte or ondeh ondeh cheesecake. Probably worth at least 1 try, and if you like rich cheese, coconut and coffee desserts, it might even become a favourite of yours.
Side note: (Basque) Cheesecake is a steal
I had a PSA about Luckin that didn't fit in with the theme of my blog because it wasn't an unusual type of food, so I'm just parking it under here.
Luckin's (basque) cheesecake is absolutely heavenly. I liked their previous steamed cheese cake as well, but this one was just much creamier, less eggy and absolutely on-point in every way. It costs only S$2.50 and beats a lot of other more expensive cafe and branded cheesecakes out there. So if you want a high quality, comforting and familiar treat, this can be a regular go-to that won't break the bank.
And check out the ingredients list (click to enlarge). It has only 7 ingredients! The only thing that one might frown at is perhaps "starch", but that's the last ingredient and starch is natural anyway. Furthermore, sugar is the 4th ingredient, after good quality stuff like cheese and cream.
The only thing is that it's not really a "basque" cheesecake. On the in-app menu they just call it a cheesecake, despite what the ingredients list says, so that's fine in my opinion.
Also from Luckin




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