Bopomofo Cafe

Taking its name from the Mandarin Chinese equivalent of “ABCs,” Bopomofo Cafe bills itself as an Asian-American coffee, tea, and snack shop inspired by the chef-owners’ Chinese, Taiwanese, and American backgrounds. After years of planning, 2019 saw the first Bopomofo open in San Gabriel, followed by four additional locations across LA, San Diego, and Orange Counties – the latter in late February 2025, replacing one of Omomo Tea Shoppe’s Irvine locations. Owing as much to its unpleasantly long lines as its limited menu, we were never huge fans of that Omomo, and have already found multiple reasons to prefer Bopomofo Cafe.

Most of Bopomofo’s menu focuses on drinks: organic teas, matcha variants, espresso drinks, and “premium signatures” that typically mix fruits, seeds, and/or vegetables with milk or soda. All regular-sized drinks range from $5.50 to $7.50 before adding boba, egg pudding, taro, or lychee jelly (75 cents each) or upsizing to large ($1 more), and you can customize sweetness, ice levels, and in some cases milk – lactose-free is the default in some drinks, oat milk in others. The chain commits to using real fruit and vegetable juices, no artificial flavors, powders, or colors, and no high fructose corn syrup, quality differences that you can taste in the drinks.

Strong, fresh-tasting ginger was the first thing we noted in their Strawberry Basil Ginger Lemonade, while fresh mint was obvious in both the Mint Matcha Latte and newer Mint Caffe Latte, each made with oat milk and pleasantly balanced with tea or espresso, respectively – there was no need to adjust sweetness levels. There were a half-dozen other drinks we wanted to sample, ranging from the espresso/Coca-Cola “Sprola” to the “HEY Sesame Milk” made with honey, black sesame puree, and lactose-free milk, but the latter showed as “sold out” when we tried to order from their touchscreen register. Meanwhile, someone successfully ordered one from a person at the counter, and it looked great. Next time, for sure.