Review: Starbucks Debuts Iced Pineapple Matcha Drink, New Spring Menu
Starbucks' spring drinks will send your taste buds on an island vacation. The coffee chain's new lineup features two tropical non-dairy coconut milk beverages and one nitro cold brew coffee, plus two larger-than-life protein-packed breakfast wraps that completely dwarf anything you've ever seen there before.
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Thanks to the team at Starbucks, The Daily Meal was able to get a first taste of the new spring menu. The best-tasting item by a landslide was the Iced Pineapple Matcha Drink made with matcha tea, pineapple and ginger flavors, coconut milk and ice. The flavors were incredibly refreshing, recalling a perfect summer day in beverage form. We seriously cannot express enough just how good this caffeinated beverage was.
The second item, dubbed the Iced Golden Ginger Drink, has a similar concept and is made with ginger, pineapple and turmeric flavors, coconut milk and ice. This was also highly drinkable, and the turmeric added a nice, subtle kick that was almost Christmassy.
The third new drink is Nitro Cold Brew with Salted Honey Cold Foam. For those unfamiliar with nitro, it's cold brew coffee infused with nitrogen, which gives it a velvety, cascading texture. It's very smooth. Cold foam is frothed milk that's made without heat or steam. The result is meringue-like, and it sits atop your iced beverage, slowly seeping into your drink instead of melting into it like hot foam would.
Nitro cold brew with salted honey cold foam is exactly what it sounds like, but it also gets a strike of toasted honey on top. It's super smokey and the honey flavor is highly present as well. If you like honey, this will be a hit. If not, this isn't the cold brew for you.
As for the food, Starbucks' new breakfast wraps are incredibly large. The first, called the Southwest veggie wrap, is vegetarian and comes with cage-free scrambled eggs, black beans, sous vide potatoes, cotija cheese, pico de gallo and jalapeno cream cheese wrapped in a salsa tortilla. You can't go wrong with eggs, cheese and potatoes. It tastes like it was made fresh, the flavors are on point and the wrap is leaps and bounds better than the super thick one you get with the spinach, feta and egg white wrap because it's thin, crispy and tastes like salsa.
The second wrap has sausage, double-smoked bacon, cage-free scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese and sous vide potatoes wrapped in a flour tortilla. Both wraps have more than 20 grams of protein each and cost $5.45 to $5.95 depending on location, which isn't bad considering they're nearly the size of your forearm.
Starbucks' new spring lineup is available now at locations nationwide. The breakfast wraps, Nitro Cold Brew with Salted Honey Cold Foam and Iced Pineapple Matcha Drink will all be new core menu items, while the Iced Golden Ginger Drink is a limited-time offering just for spring. To celebrate, grab a friend between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 5, for buy-one-get-one handcrafted beverages including secret menu items (and how to order them like a pro).