HeyTea Cheese Tea Review: Is the Cheese Foam Worth It?

The drink with the worst name in bubble tea

I’ll admit it: the first time someone told me to try cheese tea, I thought it was a prank. Cheese and tea are two words that belong in different sentences, possibly different rooms. But the queues kept getting longer, the hours-long lines of HeyTea’s early days in Guangdong, the snaking crowds after its first overseas store opened in Singapore in 2018, and now the packed Soho and New Oxford Street stores in London, and I finally gave in. One sip of a cheese-capped jasmine tea, drunk the way it’s meant to be drunk, and the joke was on me.

Here’s the short version of this review: the name is terrible, the drink is genuinely excellent, and most people who dislike it have either stirred it (don’t) or ordered the wrong one. The long version follows.

A 30-second note on where it came from

Cheese tea was invented in 2012 in Jiangmen, Guangdong, by a 21-year-old founder named Nie Yunchen in a tiny shop then called Royal Tea; the brand only became HeyTea in 2016 after copycats forced a rebrand. The full story, the failed phone repair shop, the twenty-cups-a-day experiments, and the trademark wars is worth reading, but it lives in our cheese tea history guide, not here. This article is strictly the tasting side: what the foam tastes like, how to drink it properly, and exactly what to order.

What the cheese foam actually tastes like

Let’s kill the central misconception first. There is no cheddar in cheese tea. No parmesan, no blue cheese, nothing aged, nothing funky. HeyTea’s foam is a blend of cream cheese, fresh milk, cream, and sea salt, whipped until it’s thick and silky, reportedly built on New Zealand Anchor cheese, which tells you the chain isn’t messing around with the dairy.

The closest flavor reference is the tangy top layer of a good New York cheesecake, slightly sweet and gently tart, with a whisper of salt. The salt is doing quiet but essential work: it doesn’t make the drink taste salty; it makes everything else taste more like itself. Salt suppresses bitterness and rounds out sweetness, which is why the foam pairs so well with tea; tea brings a tannic edge, the foam brings richness, and the salt negotiates the peace treaty between them.

Texture is half the experience. This isn’t latte microfoam. It’s dense and mousse-like, thick enough to hold its shape against the rim when you tilt the cup. On HeyTea’s menu you’ll see two related but different toppings: Cheezo, the full-strength salted cheese foam (as in Very Grape Cheezo or King Fone Cheezo), and Cloud, a lighter cheese-cream cap that appears on fruit slushes and matcha drinks (like the Cloud Coconut Blue). Cheezo is the original, bolder version; Cloud is its more delicate sibling. If you’re here for the famous experience, order Cheezo.

Eaten er, drunk, on its own, a spoonful of the foam is rich enough to be a dessert. But the point was never the foam alone. The point is the sip where cold, slightly bitter tea slides under a cap of salted cream and the two arrive together. That’s the flavor that built an empire, and no description quite prepares you for it. It tastes like something you should have thought of years ago.

How to drink it properly (this part genuinely matters)

Cheese tea has rules, and they exist for a reason. Get these wrong and you’ll conclude the whole thing is overrated, which is a shame, because the drink isn’t the problem.

No straw. This is the big one. A straw goes straight through the foam to the tea below, which means you drink a perfectly ordinary iced tea while a sad layer of cheese sits on top untouched. You’ve paid for the foam and then bypassed it. The correct technique is a roughly 40-degree tilt—tip the cup so tea and foam arrive at your mouth together. The foam folds into the tea as you sip. Two flavors, one mouthful, every time.

Don’t stir. Stirring is every first-timer’s instinct, and it’s the fastest way to turn a designed experience into a glass of sweet milky tea. Mixed together, the drink is fine, but “fine” isn’t what the queues are for. The whole architecture of the cup is the gradient: rich salty cream first, then the perfect middle where tea and foam mingle, then clean tea at the end. Stirring collapses all of that into one flat flavor.

Use the lid the way it’s designed. HeyTea serves cheese teas with a rotating lid; twist it to widen or narrow the drinking opening. A narrower opening pulls more foam per sip; a wider one lets more tea through. Start narrow for the full salty-cream hit, then open it up as the cup empties. It sounds fussy until you try it, and then it feels obvious.

Drink it fast, or at least, don’t let it sit. The foam has a shelf life. After ten or fifteen minutes it starts folding into the drink on its own, stirred or not, and the architecture collapses. This is a sit-down, drink-it-now cup, not a delivery order. If you’re taking it to go, many stores will put the foam in a separate container on request so it survives the trip. Worth asking.

Which cheese teas to try first

The foam is constant; the tea underneath changes everything. Here’s the order I’d recommend, from essential to adventurous. For the latest seasonal menu, check HeyTea’s official site, the lineup rotates.

1. Cheese Jasmine Green Tea. Start here. Jasmine green tea is floral, light, and a little perfumed; the salted cream rounds off the perfume while the tea’s freshness keeps the richness from getting heavy. This is the pairing that explains the entire concept in a single sip. If your store lists a Cheezo jasmine and a Cloud jasmine, the Cheezo is the fuller experience.
2. King Fone Cheezo Tea. This is the one for people who actually like tea. King Fone is HeyTea’s smoky, roasted oolong, and oolong’s toasty, slightly tannic character is the foam’s best friend; the salt tames the tannin, and the roasted notes come through more clearly under cream than they do in plain tea. Tea nerds tend to end up here permanently.
3. Very Grape Cheezo. The fruit-cheese crossover that works best. Real grape (HeyTea is obsessive about real fruit rather than syrups) with jasmine tea and a cheese cap, tart, creamy, and refreshing. It tastes like the platonic ideal of a grape dessert, and it’s consistently one of the chain’s most-ordered drinks worldwide.
4. Matcha Cheezo. Japanese matcha is bitter and grassy in a way that begs for fat and salt. The foam does for matcha what milk does for a matcha latte, except the salt makes the matcha taste more like matcha. If you’re a matcha person, this might quietly become your favorite.
5. The visual pick: Cloud Coconut Blue. Blue spirulina coconut layers under a matcha cloud—it looks like a tropical ocean and tastes like coconut, matcha, and cream. It’s lighter and more dessert-like than the Cheezo line, and it’s the drink to order when you want the photo and a good cup.

What I’d skip on a first visit: ordering a plain milk tea with pearls at HeyTea. It’s perfectly decent, but it’s the one drink on the menu where you’re paying premium prices for something any mid-range chain does just as well. At HeyTea, always order the thing only HeyTea can do, the foam.

For a sense of what these costs are where you are, check the HeyTea USA menu and prices or the UK menu prices: Cheese teas sit at the top of the board, and it’s worth knowing that before you fall in love.

The honest criticisms

No honest review skips the downsides, so here they are.

It’s a calorie bomb. Cream cheese, milk, sugar in the tea, and possibly boba or fruit on top; a fully loaded cheese tea can run into several hundred calories, putting it firmly in dessert territory. Third-party menu listings routinely put the richest combinations at 400+ calories. If you want the specifics, our HeyTea nutrition and calorie breakdown goes drink by drink. Nobody’s ordering this for their health; just don’t let the word “tea” fool you into thinking it’s light.

It’s unapologetically dairy. The name hides this “cheese tea” sounds like it might be a flavoring, but there’s real, substantial dairy in every cup. Lactose-intolerant drinkers need to steer clear or ask about alternatives; oat milk options exist for some drinks, but the cheese cap itself is dairy by definition.

It’s a peak-hours ordeal. The same made-to-order preparation that makes the foam great makes the queue slow. At popular stores during afternoon rush, the wait is real. Off-peak visits are a completely different, much calmer experience.

The menu churns. HeyTea rotates seasonal drinks aggressively, which is exciting until your favorite disappears. If you fall hard for a limited edition, enjoy it while it lasts and don’t get attached.

The honest verdict

Is the famous cheese foam worth the hype? Yes, with exactly one condition: you have to drink it the way it was designed. Tilt the cup, skip the straw, don’t stir, and drink it fresh. Done right, it’s one of the most genuinely inventive things in the entire bubble tea world, and I say that as someone who mocked the name for months before trying it.

What converted me wasn’t just the flavor, fun as it is. It was realizing how considered the whole thing is the salt level, the foam density, the rotating lid, the pairing logic between foam and tea base, the real-fruit program underneath. This is a product someone obsessed over, and the hype, for once, undersells it, mostly because the name does it no favors.

Order the cheese jasmine or the King Fone oolong. Tilt, don’t stir. And prepare to apologize to everyone you mocked for drinking cheese tea. I certainly had to.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is HeyTea cheese tea made with real cheese?

Yes. The foam is made from real cream cheese blended with fresh milk, cream, and sea salt, whipped into a thick cap, reportedly built on New Zealand Anchor cheese. It’s closer to cheesecake topping than to anything you’d put on a pizza: no aged or funky cheeses involved. The founding recipe was specifically built on real milk rather than the non-dairy creamer powder most Chinese tea shops used in 2012, and the brand still markets that real-ingredient stance today. You can read more about the company on HeyTea’s Wikipedia page.

How are you supposed to drink cheese tea?

Without a straw, tilting the cup at roughly 40 degrees so the tea and foam reach your mouth together. HeyTea’s rotating lids let you adjust the opening — narrower for more foam per sip, wider for more tea. Don’t stir: mixing collapses the layered gradient (cream first, then tea-and-cream together, then clean tea) that the drink is designed around. And drink it within about ten to fifteen minutes, before the foam folds into the tea on its own.

Which HeyTea cheese tea should a first-timer order?

Cheese jasmine green tea. The floral lightness of jasmine is the clearest showcase for what the salted foam does — one sip and the concept clicks. If you’re more of a tea person than a dessert person, the King Fone Cheezo (roasted oolong under cheese foam) is the connoisseur’s pick. Save the fruit-cheese combinations like Very Grape Cheezo for your second visit, once you understand the baseline.

How many calories are in HeyTea cheese tea?

It’s a dessert drink, not a light one. The foam itself is cream cheese and milk, and fully loaded versions with brown sugar boba or fruit can run into several hundred calories per cup. Third-party menu listings put the richest combinations well above 400 calories. For a drink-by-drink breakdown, see our HeyTea nutrition guide. If calories matter to you, the plain cheese teas (jasmine or oolong, no boba, less sugar) are the lightest way to try it.

Does cheese tea taste weird?

The first sip is surprising your brain expects the foam and the tea to clash. They don’t. The salt bridges them: it cuts the tea’s bitterness and keeps the cream from tasting heavy, landing in a savory-sweet zone similar to salted caramel. Most skeptics convert within two or three sips. The people who genuinely don’t like it usually object to rich textures (whipped cream, mousse) rather than the flavor itself — if you dislike creamy textures generally, this isn’t your drink.

Keep reading

• What Is Cheese Tea? HeyTea’s Signature Drink Explained
• 10 Most Popular HeyTea Drinks, Ranked Honestly