Tea Garden and return to Pangea

TC and I wanted to go to Pangea again (this time with Bert) but before doing so, we checked out the place right next to it, Tea Garden...

This turned out to be a bad decision...

This is a Taiwanese style cafe selling snacks, boba, tea and other drinks. They also serve shaved ice. I saw a photo from this link after doing a search on ""Taiwanese shaved ice and "San Diego". This is what popped up so I thought it might be worth a try.

How wrong I was. I briefly read the yelp reviews which were dismal but still wanted to try it. We got the regular sized shaved ice with three items.

It was served in a bowl (like at Kang Kang food court) - there was the shaved ice with red beans, lychee jelly bits, and mango, topped off with a scoop of ice cream of dubious origin.

The ice was not in finely shaved sheets like we had at Salju in Alhambra. The texture was icy but not fine. We desperately tried to like this ,despite the hot day that weekend, even this "what could have been" refreshing dessert was a complete disappointment. First off, the ice cream didn't even taste like ice cream. It was like ice milk and tasted really artificial. The read beans were very syrupy. The only thing TC and I liked was the lychee jelly bits. She ended up fishing for those. There was also no sweetened condensed milk and I didn't bother asking for any. Good thing that I didn't because after reading Kirbie's post (which I should have read before even going here but didn't know about it until doing research after our visit), it turns out that they charge extra for condensed milk. What a rip off.

The oddest thing about this shaved ice were the bits of "mango". Even though they "look" like real fruit, the taste was really "off". The mango pieces were bright yellow with a "fake" looking greenish edge, as if the "pseudo" fruit had bits of the peel left on. The texture was also rubbery. It was really strange. It also tasted like it was pickled. Really fkg gross I tell you. This was a $6.41 mistake. We couldn't bring ourselves to finish even half of it. Ugh. Total fail.

I left wishing I could scrape my tongue with a sheet of industrial strength sandpaper. That mango really grossed me out.

On to Pangea...

Bert chose this coffee flavored bun (with the white sprinkles) while I chose the Black Sesame Bun.

The bread was nice and soft. The filling didn't really have a coffee taste to it. I thought the sprinkles were overkill. They didn't really add to the flavor other than a slight sugary crunch.

TC liked the Taro Mochi rolls so we got one of those (on left) and the Coconut buns again (on the right).

Yes, this delicious coconut bun with nice crispy edges completely redeemed our terrible experience from Tea Garden.

We also bought one of the Hot Dog things there for TC. Delicious!

But never again will we have the shaved ice there. I'd rather listen to Kenny G. and have my toe hairs pulled out with a rusty tweezer.

Better to go up north and try places like The Balcony in Irvine, Salju Dessert in Alhamba, Fluff Ice in Monterey Park, Kang Kang Food Court (only $3.25 with three toppings!), and Class 302 in Rowland Heights. We've only tried Kang Kang and Salju and are excited to try the other places in the near future.