85C Bakery and Cafe

Although we were originally going to do room service for breakfast, our less than stellar dinner the night before crushed that possibility. No, we wanted to GTFO and go somewhere else! Since we were in the area, it was about time we visit this bakery that I'd been hearing about and reading about, 85C Bakery Cafe in Irvine.  It was already getting hot and it wasn't even 9:30 am yet. The line was also long (you can't see it here) but moved quickly. We spent about 20 minutes from standing in line to getting our breads and leaving.


The bakery is in the Diamond Jamboree shopping complex. It's got everything Asian there (except Filipino stuff)! Sushi, dim sum, an H-Mart around the corner, another bakery (Bon Epi) that we passed on visiting (since we already had a lot of items from 85c), and more.

85C is known for this drink so Bert ordered one of these along with a passion fruit iced tea for me. I don't know what happened but they made his drink "iced" instead of "hot" but we didn't want to wait longer to have them redo it so iced it was. I wish the coffee looked as good as it did in the sign but we'll never know because it was in a paper cup with a lid on it. I had a bit of the coffee and really liked it, wishing I had ordered that as well because my tea tasted awful. It tasted like I was drinking flowers or some sort of floral fkg soap. Ugh! Bert really enjoyed the coffee's flavor; he felt the salt brought out the sweetness.

As you wait in line, someone is at the door doing crowd control, letting only a few people in at a time. once you're in like McLovin', you are given a tray and tongs. Now you can pick whatever breads (sweet or savory) that you want. When you are done choosing, get your ass in line. Another worker will take you tray and bag each individual item for you before you pay. Another blogger (link at the end) said that the cashiers used to have to bag all the items. Man, what a colossal waste of time. I'm glad they changed that routine!

Okay, now since I'm a "newbie" to this place as well as to Taiwanese style breads, I didn't really know what I was getting. Bert and I felt that little signs or placards identifying the breads would have helped. Everyone else seemed to know what they wanted.  You can look at Kirbie's posts (linked at the end) for better descriptions and photos of the other offerings. My pictures weren't that great so I didn't include them

This was the tray before the stuff was bagged up.  Top row - some sort of swirl bread with nuts in it (turned out to have walnuts - man, this was delicious! We ate that 2 days later), a rectangle of puff pastry with cheese and tomatoes, some sort of bun with sugar and almonds on top, a custard tart below (we never got to eat this; it was placed in my SIL's fridge and may have been thrown out by mistake), a plastic container of mini cheese bits, a bagged half moon shaped soft bread with blueberry filling...The bottom row had a square puff pastry with blueberry filling, some kind of heart shaped pastry (turned out to have peants inside! Yum), and a flaky pastry with blueberry cream cheese filling.

In addition to the fresh bread items, they also had two display cases of the most awesome looking desserts. If only...

Funny story, while I was in line, I recognized someone from afar but didn't think it would be who I thought it was. Well, it turned out to be a former student from my school. In fact, he had just graduated. I greeted him in line as the line moved closer. Turns out he was there since he was going to be attending UC Irvine. The student is a fraternal twin (his twin was one of our office aides this past semester), looks totally "all American" but speaks German, English, and Spanish fluently (having been educated in Tijuana up til 9th grade). Of all random places to see a student!

Below - the savory pastry! The buttery and flaky layers were delicious as was the cheese topping! Would have been better with some slices of ham on this!

I need to have something that tasted like actual food first before having anything sweet. There's my horrible passion fruit tea. I didn't expect it to taste like that. It was so gross tasting that I didn't even come close to finish it. A few sips and that was it. Bert tried it too and he also agreed that it had a strange taste to it.

Here's that blueberry cream cheese pastry! These pastries just about melted in our mouths! Awesome!

I got a package of the mini cheese bites - Bert liked them more than I did. I wasn't too keen on the cheese flavor (not sure what kind of cheese was used but I didn't like the smell). But damn, doesn't that photo look fkg cool? Ha ha.

Cheese bite of unknown cheese origin...

We had no idea what this was or what it had inside it when we picked it out. Let me tell you that this crust was to die for! Very light and crackly and melt in your mouth delicious! Bert and I had a fe bites of this before putting it away and heading out again...

I wished they had signs to identify these breads! Whatever this one was, it was fkg great and I'd totally eat this again!

By the time we left, the line had grown even longer and the temperatures were even hotter than we expected (mid 80's)...

Who else has been to 85C?

Kirbie has been here many times. Here's here intro post  along with another recent post which also has links to her previous visits! She also wrote on their Sea Salt Coffee (with photos, unlike me).
Along with Kirbie, you can also read about  Eat Travel Eat's visit (apparently this was before they had an extra employee bagging the items separately; before the cashiers had to do it! Yikes!)  as well as  The Savored Blog's take on the Sea Salt Coffee...

More info and  reviews on 85 C:
Company info, yelp, and 85 C's official site...

Our next destination, Cream Pan in Tustin.