Whoo, this place. I was debating whether to classify this post as a boba post or a food post but ultimately went with a food post because the popcorn chicken totally overshadowed the drinks, and they’re not bad drinks by any means.
So we’ve seen this place around and debated for awhile whether we should drop by or not. The store is located on the corner of a little plaza in San Gabriel, close to The Golden Deli (great pho place) and Labobatory (our experience there was not great, but this was years ago now). Anyway, we gave it a try and ordered a few things: Popcorn Chicken (non-spicy), Mapo Tots, the Summer Blossom Green Tea, and the BA-LA Matcha drink.
Before we get into the food, let me highlight our ordering experience because it… was not great.
At the time of writing, they don’t take orders on-site. You have to go to their website and order ahead. Then, once you do, you have to check in with the crew. One checked-in, they’ll call to let you know you’re orders ready or you’ll receive a text that it is.
Now that’s all fine and well but I had quite a bit of trouble ordering online through my phone. Maybe the UX is a little better on a computer, but it was obviously not optimized for mobile devices (I have a high-end phone, in case anybody’s wondering, so no problems there).
To explain, I went ahead and scrolled through the menu a bit before adding the food and the drinks into my cart. Then, once we were all good an happy, I hit the button to order. Here’s where the first problem arose. Putting in my card number (they don’t take PayPal or anything), was a pain in the butt because the page kept shooting up and down whenever I had to input info into the next section. That meant that I had to scroooooollllll all the way up again just to see what info they needed next and scroooooolllll up again for the info box after that. Annoying!
Having done all that, and happy it was over, I tapped the order/complete/please make my food button, but a popup/error message appeared saying that one of my items were no longer available! Of course, it’s understandable when something goes out of stock so I tried taking things out, reordering again, taking another thing out (and all this time, I had to reinput my card number and re-experience Six Flags’ Drop of Doom a few more times)… What’s strange was that they had an option at the top of the menu that filtered items between ‘All’ and ‘Available’ items. According to the filter, everything I ordered was supposed to be available.
Anyway, I took out the drinks, which happened to be the problem, and ordered the food, thinking we could order the drinks once we were there (we were driving). Lo and behold, they didn’t take orders so my sister tried to order the drinks through her phone and, voila, it happened to work for her! Now I feel discriminated against by the website. Not only that, the drinks were expected to finish later than the food, and as it was getting to be a bit late, we were admittedly a little frustrated.
Well, it luckily didn’t take long for them to prepare our food and drinks so once we got the ping, we grabbed them and scurried back to the car to eat. And, oh my, it was beautiful…
Let me go into the chicken first.
Now, the chicken is simply divine. It’s not heavy, it’s very tasty, even without the sauce, and it’s cooked super well. Portion was generous, though a few pieces were HUGE! But I couldn’t complain since it was so good. The options you have for the chicken is dark or white meat and we went with the dark. Have to say, it certainly didn’t disappoint.
So, the chicken is good but that green sauce next to it? Absolutely addictive. I don’t know what they put in it but it’s so good that I could drink it (I didn’t cause I needed to save some for the tots). They say it’s Thai basil aoli, I say it’s drugs; seriously, go give this a try if you’re in the area. And don’t forget to ask for more if you can. It’s that good.
The Mapo Tots were pretty good as well but the flavor wasn’t as impactful as I thought it would be, which makes sense since it’s tofu. This their take on chili cheese, just Thai-style, but fair warning, if you go in thinking you’ll get a chili cheese amount of impact, you might be disappointed. I did enjoy it though, even mild as it was. The tots themselves were fried really well and held up under the sauce.
Here’s the Mapo up close so you can eat with your eyes:
Mapo! 
Tots!
Now the drinks. I have to say, we came here with slightly high expectations since their marketing pictures looked so good. Plus, most of their menu is made up of drinks so it looked like that was their main focus (besides the chicken burger, which we didn’t try yet). Going off of that expectation, I admit we were slightly disappointed, but not by too much. The drinks themselves were pretty good but I think we ordered ones that didn’t match enough of our flavor palate for us to enjoy it for long.
The Summer Blossom Green Tea w/ boba was pretty refreshing (it’s lychee and pear juice). It tasted like more towards authentic than synthetic juices, if you know what I mean. The boba was soft and chewy, and had a decent amount of flavor on it, too. Overall, a good solid drink for a light summer day.
The BA-LA Matcha, on the other hand, was a bit difficult for me to drink, though I want to mention that it made me incredibly happy to see them use lactose-free whole milk instead of just milk substitutes (which they do have, but I’m not a fan of those). The one thing that got me about this drink though was the strength of the guava in it, which I guess I should’ve expected since they mentioned it was pure guava nectar on their site. Even so, it was a little bit too strong for me.
On the other hand, if you love guava and strong flavors, then definitely give this drink a try because it’s good, it just didn’t match my tongue specifically.
All-in-all, a very good place for food and drink, especially that chicken and green sauce (seriously, that sauce!).
As we were driving away, I kept wondering if we could buy a bottle of them sauces to take home with us. I think I’ll ask next time.
Until then, see ya!
EVERY DAY A MYSTERY 