ThirsTea - Boba, Rolled Ice Cream — Restaurant in Escondido

We decided tonight to get rolled ice cream here in Escondido, instead of going down to Convoy or Mira Mesa. The El Norte location was clean and inviting and we were greeted by a polite, clean cut but slightly unmotivated young girl. Ordering off the menu SEEMED the same as it would at any other ice cream joint or any restaurant for that matter. Watching the young man making the people ahead of us’ order looked like the control tower panic scene in the movie “Airplane.” That’s when I began to wonder if that kid didn’t snuff out any motivation that girl once had before he arrived on shift. Like most people that are told they have to wait 20 minutes (not a big deal for a Friday night) I turned my attention to my phone when I heard the same kid ask the lady, with empty hands, waiting patiently for her Boba if she already received her order. I by her response, “Not if you haven’t made it yet” that I wasn’t the only patron feeling this kid was firing on all cylinders. Expecting my order would arrive looking as good as it on the menu, I was disappointed to see a cup with undressed rolled coffee ice cream. No cool stuff like all the other places we go. No toppings, no pecans and toasted marshmallows. Not even those cookie sticks that make it stand out. $8 ice cream should resemble $8 ice cream. We can all be honest, the teppanyaki place’s fried rice isn’t much better than Panda House’s, you’re paying for the presentation. When I told the kid I thought it would look more like the picture, he responds “that’s just for looks.” I asked him if he could make it look like the one in the picture. He then responded “I didn’t make the menu, I don’t even know what those toppings are.” As I named them from the picture, he again reminded me that he didn’t make the menu, nor did they have anything pictured. As I sat down to eat my plain coffee rolled ice cream, kind of POed at the way this kid dismissed my request, I realized it was really good ice cream. It wasn’t $8 worth, but more could be done with it and especially the kid’s lazy attitude in trying to make it right. It’s unfortunate that the knuckle head got under my skin (and others) this evening. Look at the picture online and tell me it doesn’t look great. The ice cream was good however. We may give it another try, but not if that kid is behind the counter. It did give the wife and I something to talk about on the way home. Friday 10/17/25 at 6:00pm. Someone should snap some sense...

A very dissapointing experience. I went with my brother and got the rolled cookies n cream ice cream because the picture on the screen looked soooo good, my brother got a caramel milkshake. No hustle in these employees movements what so ever. By the time we got one of our items, we had forgotten what we had ordered. I got my ice cream afterwards and it looked NOTHING like what was on the menu, it was missing many things. When I checked to see if there was somewhere that I may have missed that would have said that what I ordered would not be what was on the screen, there was nothing. I was scammed! Lovely employees, but I will not be returning unless it's to get my money back. Very disheartening considering I loved the shop that was there...

Really nice place with great treats. Our two favorite things are boba and rolled ice cream, and they do both very well! The passion fruit tea with mango boba and rainbow jelly was absolutely heavenly, and the banana Nutella rolled ice cream was delicious! We look forward to returning the next time we are in the area.

The only reason this review is four stars instead of five is because they need more staff. On the day we went, they were only staffed with one person, who was doing her absolute best to keep up with taking orders and making all the treats, but she was struggling to get...