← Misc · 2022 – 2026

Boba, Bingsu and Other Sweets

The drinks and desserts we keep going back for, and a few we only had once.

This is the sweet half of what we eat out. Meals will get their own post. Drinks and desserts are the bigger habit: by a rough count, the tea shops, coffee bars and bakeries in this post add up to several hundred visits over four years, far more than any restaurant.

The post goes region by region, each with a map of the shops in it. A chain shows every branch we went to in that region; it is rarely more than two. The photos come from both of our phones, most of the drinks from my wife's camera roll, held up in one hand in front of the shop, the car dashboard or the next table.

San Gabriel Valley

Most of the boba is here, on Valley Boulevard in Alhambra and San Gabriel, where the tea shops line up one after another for a couple of miles.

On July 7, 2022 it was Xing Fu Tang, where the brown sugar boba is cooked in a wok at the counter, and a drink in a deep galaxy blue. Ten days later there was a crawl down East Valley Boulevard that ended at 3 Cats Tea (三喵制茶), with a row of drinks lined up under the shop's cat figurines.

The regulars since then are a short list within a few blocks of each other: Chicha San Chen, Alittle Tea, MeloMelo, and Cotti, whose cups come with cartoon characters.

MeloMelo's drinks come piled with whipped cream and fruit. A little north, Fika Fika in Arcadia makes lattes in two colors, plain and lavender.

The newest obsession is Molly Tea (茉莉奶白), the jasmine milk tea chain. Its first Los Angeles shop opened on Valley Boulevard in spring 2025, with a giant pink cup surrounded by flowers out front.

Nine days later there was a line out the door well after ten at night. Down the same street, Yu Cake makes mille crêpe cakes; this slice is from October 2025.

Los Angeles

The rest of Los Angeles is more spread out: Century City, Little Tokyo and Koreatown, the blocks around USC, Glendale and Burbank, and Torrance in the South Bay.

HEYTEA's Los Angeles shop and Chamberlain Coffee sit almost next to each other in Century City. Chamberlain makes a purple drink with a flower on top. In Little Tokyo, SomiSomi fills a fish-shaped waffle with soft serve.

Fall 2022 was around Little Tokyo and USC: koala-face cones with cookie ears, and teddy-bear parfaits.

Before Christmas 2024 there was a trip to the Krispy Kreme on Crenshaw, where the donuts come off the line onto racks behind the glass, and a dozen came home.

Porto's is the bakery we visit most, in Glendale and Burbank, for the cake case as much as anything. The matcha soft serve is from the food court at the Mitsuwa market in Torrance.

And two smaller ones: mango sticky rice from Kanomwaan in Thai Town, and in September 2024 the Genshin Impact meal at McDonald's, whose apple pie came in a box with the game's logo.

Orange County

In Orange County the list is mostly cafés and dessert shops rather than tea. The exception is HEYTEA, which the card records show more often than any other tea shop, at its two shops in Irvine.

Sul & Beans in Irvine is the bingsu place: shaved milk ice piled in a bowl and topped with sliced banana and cream, or with strawberries, or with mango and toasted coconut.

Coffee Dose in Costa Mesa puts its drinks in pastel cups. Crumbl is a pink box of oversized cookies, here a strawberry one.

Salt & Straw is usually a cup to go. And on November 1, 2025 there were croissants at Chaupain Bakery, with Wangcai sitting very politely next to the box.

In November 2024 Happy Lemon in Tustin did a Genshin Impact collab, with life-size standees of Klee and Kirara by the door and a themed cup and bag.

The counter was covered in merchandise. And one more bingsu, strawberry, at another dessert café in January 2026.

Bay Area

From June to August 2026 the Bay Area got a short list of its own, mostly along El Camino Real.

In Santa Clara, a matcha latte from Big Mug Coffee Roaster, and a few doors down at Sulbing a mango bingsu with a scoop of ice cream on the very top.

In August there was a flight at The Coffee Movement in San Francisco, a latte and three small glasses on a ledge with the street behind.

On the road

New York gets its own map, because both of the big tea chains followed us there.

At the end of July 2024, on the summer road trip, it was HEYTEA by Times Square two days running: a yellow fruit tea one evening, and the next afternoon a cup held up in front of the sign.

Two years later, in July 2026, it was Molly Tea on the Upper West Side.

And the rest, scattered across the map: Rare Tea outside Seattle in July 2023, rolled ice cream in Santa Barbara, a Molly Tea in Philadelphia, and shave ice on the Big Island.

Rare Tea came in paper bags. In Santa Barbara, on a sunny June day, Wangcai sat on guard beside the table.

On the Big Island in September 2026 it was shave ice: purple and white under a cap of cream, with a striped straw, and the next afternoon a bowl crowned with an orchid.

Shuffle

And everything else: 648 drinks and desserts from my wife's camera roll, one from each outing, in a random order that changes every time the page loads.

← ❚❚ → shuffle

Photo locations have been removed from the published images. Map pins mark the shops themselves, mostly from OpenStreetMap. Visit counts come from our own records and only count the times we paid by card.