The Alley

Other drinks omit the creme brulee in favor of layered cream, and swap the brown sugar emphasis for matcha, ube, cocoa, milk tea, or fruit tea. As the peach oolong shown here suggests, they’re good, but rarely as distinctive as the creme brûlée version, and tend to be pretty easy to finish thanks to copious ice. Fruit coffee mixes, including mango, peach-lychee, or passion fruit-pineapple, recently introduced new flavors that you won’t find everywhere.

We’ve mostly visited the Fountain Valley location, which tends to have dispassionate service and fairly long drink wait times, with an interior design that feels more like a modern design statement than a comfortable place to hang out. A newer location at the Irvine Spectrum tends to fill orders faster, and provides less incentive to stick around. We recommend trying one, particularly for the brown sugar drinks as desserts, at least once.