The hallowed green halls of Starbucks are welcoming four new items to the permanent menu: three new frozen drinks and a quiche-esque breakfast bite featuring potatoes, eggs and chives.
The new beverages follow in the footsteps of Starbucks' popular Refreshers line, with a frozen twist and a swirl of strawberry coulis. Each icy drink is made with the same lemonade base, but they manage to remain distinctive, appealing to different tastes without losing the branded homogeneity that has made Starbucks an international icon of drink-making.
Each drink is brightly coloured and Instagrammable, but beware the dreaded "splitting" effect symptomatic of lower-quality slushies: the iced part separates from the juice part, leaving bland crunchy water and hyper-flavoured liquid in your cup.
The three new frozen Refreshers sit on a display cutting board in all their glory.Aashia Bose | @aashxa
The first drink I tried was the worst contender in this category. The pineapple passion fruit frozen Refresher is heavy on the pineapple and light on the passion fruit (to my chagrin) in terms of flavour, with an interesting and not entirely pleasant flatness on the palate. It feels like the pineapple flavour could be brighter and the beverage could overall be sweeter, but if you're a fan of low-sugar tropical tastes, you'll probably enjoy this one.
Second was the açai strawberry frozen Refresher, which held together better than the pineapple version, but suffered from a slightly intense sweetness that started to overwhelm even in the small tasting portions I was presented with. I can imagine that a full-size version of the drink could become sickly pretty fast, but if you can't get enough sweetness in your Starbucks orders, you're going to be just fine.
Samples of all three new drinks as well as the new baked menu item.Willa Holt | MTL Blog
I preferred the açai version to the pineapple drink, but the mango dragonfruit frozen Refresher was by far my favourite, and the one I'm likely to order at least once this summer. It gave more dragonfruit than mango, which is surprising given the subtleness of dragonfruits compared to a ripe mango (in my humblest of opinions), but there was a solid middle- and aftertaste of mango that was very enjoyable. It's also the most drinkable by far, which might be due to the lack of lemonade flavour and the more balanced sweetness profile. It's the least acidic of the three, which my stomach much prefers.
Last, I got to try the newest edible menu item: a potato cheddar and chive baked square with egg. It's very, very soft, like a just-right quiche or a good omelette. Softly savoury with a pleasant chive-y tang, these bakes are overall harmless: edible and enjoyable, not large enough to really constitute a meal (even breakfast) but bigger than a cake pop (thank god). They're a nice option if you're a little bit hungry, craving comfort and not actually ready for lunch yet. Plus, they're probably just as edible regardless of how many teeth you have, and that's gotta count for something.
