Hamada-Ya Bakery — Restaurant in Irvine

I saw on Yelp that this place had green tea soft serve, so I was excited. Have to say I was pretty disappointed.

I got the green tea and vanilla mixed soft serve, which I do have to say was rather cheap, but not the best quality. The soft serve was really icy and not like that creamy soft serve texture that you can get at other places. One nice thing was that they put Cinnamon Toast Crunch at the bottom of the soft serve, which actually worked really well with the ice cream. Will definitely be keeping this in mind when I get ice cream now. However, the overall quality was not that good.

I didn't get any of their pastries, but some did look good. May come back to try them out, but their soft serve doesn't really deserve this...

Top picks: Strawberry Cheesecake Danish & Spicy Curry Donut.

An absolute must whenever I'm here. My boyfriend loves their strawberry cheesecake Danish pastries, but my recent favorites have been the Almond Danish and spicy curry donut. The curry packs some heat, which was surprising because I feel most "spicy" Japanese dishes are relatively mild for my taste buds.

Other items that I like, but haven't had a ton of repeats have been the custard pudding, bavarian chocolate, mixed fruit tart and red bean cream bun. It's not because they weren't good, but I had my eyes on the strawberry danishes. They always sell out if you come later in the day.

However, I think I may try to venture out of my norm on...

Stopped by to pick up a melon pan and a loaf of shokupan, but also was curious about the iced kinako milk tea.

Melon pan was surprisingly pleasant. The crust had a light crisp and sprinkled with granulated sugar. It's no melon pan from Asakusa's Kagetsudo, but it'll do!

I got a full flavor of kinako my first few sips. However, as I got to the bottom, I could see undissolved sugar and kinako powder at the bottom. So execution was lacking.

Finally, the shokupan was soft and fluffy. Can't complain as it made for a killer...