ChaTraMue

As iconic drinks go, red-orange tea with condensed milk is so famously associated with Thailand that it’s known all across the world as “Thai iced tea,” while its less common sister drink can now be found at some places – including Orange County – as “green Thai tea.” Eighty-some years after their invention and roughly forty years after the red version began appearing in U.S. Thai restaurants, Thailand-based tea company ChaTraMue has become more assertive about promoting itself here as their original creator, licensing multiple California-based franchisees to expand the brand’s footprint outside of Asia.

The first U.S. ChaTraMue debuted in mid-2024 outside of Los Angeles’s Thai supermarket LAX-C, followed in January 2025 by a second location in Rosemead. In April 2025, Orange County’s first ChaTraMue opened in Westminster with a new franchisor: Sarine Bunkua, whose mother Jazz Singsanong owns LA’s undisputably awesome Thai restaurant Jitlada.

We first visited the LAX-C location, a nice little cafe decorated with a mix of metal tea containers, a beautifully colorful Thai wall mural, and seating for perhaps a dozen people. For $8 to $14 depending on the quantity and flavor, guests can purchase red, green, gold, or rose ChaTraMue teas for at-home brewing, with freshly made drinks – mostly with milk or condensed milk – ranging from $5.50 to $6.25, with boba and jelly toppings adding 65 cents to each price. You can safely go from “regular” 100% sweetness to 70% sweetness on drinks without losing any impact; we can’t imagine what 130% “extra sweet” would taste like.

The LAX-C cafe substantially overlaps OC’s location in tea options: Red Thai tea is offered in original and sweet-sour-balanced Thai lemon versions, alongside Thai green milk teas in regular and “extra” versions – the latter without the green tea’s typical mix of jasmine leaves, making the flavor less complex and bitter. Additional options, such as honey lemon green tea, plum red tea, matcha, hojicha, cocoa, and rose tea are also available, the latter with conspicuous poster warnings of a “natural laxative effect.” Someone who was considering the drink was verbally warned by staff that the effect would kick in after two or so hours, and advised not to travel during that window.

Westminster’s ChaTraMue is located immediately next to the Asian Garden Mall and Banh Cuon Tay Ho, occupying a smaller cafe space with poor parking. Equipped with a La Marzocco espresso machine, this location offers a handful of Thai-inspired coffee drinks, including a TraMue coffee made with condensed milk and a chocolatey coffee, as well as “Thai espresso” (regular milk), Americano, mocha, cappuccino, and latte versions. The OC shop’s drink prices are a little higher, and its packaged tea prices are noticeably so.