HEYTEA Pistachio Cloud Jasmine Coconut

The HEYTEA Pistachio Cloud Jasmine Coconut is $10.49 and 285 calories, and it is the most unusual thing in the milk tea range. A pistachio cloud floated over 100% coconut water and jasmine tea.

Pistachio in a cloud is a genuinely odd idea and it works better than it reads. The nut brings a green, faintly sweet richness that sits on top of the usual salted cream base, and because pistachio is naturally a little savoury it pushes the cloud further in the direction the salt was already taking it. What you get is a foam that tastes like a dessert ingredient rather than like plain cream.

Underneath is where it gets interesting. Coconut water, not coconut milk, which means the base is thin and clean rather than creamy. Against a rich cloud that contrast is the whole design: the top of the cup is dense and nutty, the bottom is light and slightly saline, and the jasmine sits between them holding it together.

The numbers tell the same story. At 16g of fat this carries more than any other milk tea on the menu, yet the sugar sits at just 21g, the lowest in the category. That combination is unusual and it is why the drink reads rich without reading sweet.

Pistachio is declared alongside milk, which makes this the only drink on the HEYTEA menu carrying a tree nut allergen. Worth knowing if you are ordering for someone else.

It is one of four drinks on the menu built around pistachio cloud, the others sitting in the Tea Lab range at $11.90. This is the cheapest way into that flavour at $10.49, and the only one where it sits over coconut water rather than milk.

It is not a drink for everyone and the shop knows it. Pistachio reads as a dessert flavour to most people, and putting it over something as lean as coconut water is a deliberate refusal to make the obvious version. Anyone expecting a sweet nutty milkshake will find the base surprisingly austere.

For the pistachio cloud over a tea and milk base instead, the Gardenia 3.6 is the Tea Lab version. For a lighter coconut drink with no cloud, the Coconut Mango Boom is $8.99.