Naricha Tea & Coffee
Cuteness-focused Irvine tea shop remixes its short-lived predecessor's decor and concept
Six months before opening as Naricha Tea & Coffee, the boba shop hidden in an Irvine plaza near Newport Beach operated as Bober Tea & Mochi Dough, part of a small chain that sells drinks, donuts, and stuffed animals in cute, heavily pink-decorated spaces – the aesthetics and toy gimmicks made more of an impression than the food and drinks. In late 2024, Naricha soft-opened with signs indicating that it’s open while remodeling, leaving ambiguous the extent to which the new shop will ultimately differ from Bober; for now, it feels like a substantially similar remix.
As was the case before, Naricha’s space is overloaded with Instagram-ready flowers, neon signs, and decor items such as a pink British-style phonebooth and mailbox, though they’ve been moved around the boxy seating area, leaving the rear wall covered in candy heart-styled stickers. Marble tables offer ample seating including green quilted benches and gold-framed pink chairs.
Like Bober, you order drinks (generally $6-$7) and mochi donuts from large touchscreen displays mounted on a wall with somewhat confusing paper menus. In addition to fruit teas, tea lattes, specialties, favorites, espressos, and Vietnamese coffees, the main menu’s “tea classics” section points customers to a second “Teapresso” menu of black, green, oolong, and fruit teas that are “individually brewed and made to order,” with a promise that “your patience will be rewarded!” Although we needed to do some online research to figure this out, the concept is apparently to use an espresso-style machine to differentiate Teapresso teas from batch-made ones, which should at a minimum be an interesting experiment for this shop.
But wait – there’s more. New to Naricha is a “secret menu” with additional choices for $6.50 each, which you’ll apparently need to ask about at the very lightly staffed front counter. We’re not sure how this will work, in practice: After inquiring about one intriguingly named option (“Angry Matcha”) that was on the touchscreen menu, undescribed, we were told that it was an experimental item and not actually available. Perhaps the “secret menu” should wait until the not-secret menu has been finalized.
We ultimately ordered two other drinks that caught our attention as atypical: a Hazelnut Assam Tea Latte, and a Black Sesame Latte, the latter listed as one of “Nari’s favorites.” Unfortunately, neither of the drinks was particularly good; there was no obvious hazelnut flavor in the super-sweet tea latte, while the black sesame latte looked and tasted like roasted sesame seeds mixed with plain milk and barely any sugar. We wouldn’t order either one again.
Eight mochi donut flavors were available on our visit, and we were told that they’d been freshly made that morning: churro, matcha, taro with Oreo, cookies & cream, polar express (animal cookie), red velvet, chocolate caramel, and apple cinnamon. We tried the last of those, which had a nice glaze with obvious apple and cinnamon flavors, though the base donut was pretty bland in flavor and not clearly freshly made.
As was the case with Bober, you can order drinks with cups that hold one of six randomly selected stuffed animals for a $6 premium. On our visit, they were Hello Kitty characters, and although we don’t love the idea of stuffing them into drink cups, they would be cute enough to buy separately.
At this point, we think Naricha needs some work. Beyond finishing whatever its remodel has in store, it will hopefully devote some serious time to streamlining its menu and perfecting its recipes – right now, it feels like a somewhat confused and confusing remix of different ideas. If and when the dust settles, we may return to give it another shot.
Stats
Price: $-$$
Service: Counter
Open Since: 2024
Addresses
2626 Dupont Dr. Suite 40
Irvine, CA 92612
949.522.3248
Instagram: @narichachacha