NaiSnow Tea and Bakery Long Island City — Restaurant in New York

HONEST REVIEW (forfeited a free gift)

The good: The egg tarts were a little oily but the custard filling was eggy, sweet and the pastry was light and flakey! Overall egg tarts are decent, 3 or 4 stars. I’m personally not a fan of pork floss but my boyfriend said it was good. The floss, seaweed and sesame seed all work well together. The store was pretty efficient, we didn’t have to wait too long but we also didn’t really customize the drinks. We got the BOGO deal and got the avocado drink with the jasmine milk tea. The jasmine was still too sweet IMO even at reduced sugar but that’s just my preference!!

The bad… We heard about this through social media (Instagram) and every single “influencer” post was an ad. But we still wanted to try it because we love egg tarts and this one looked pretty solid!! We also noticed 200+ 5star reviews and thought it was kinda odd especially on the first day or at least the first week that they opened. When we got there, I noticed the giant sign that said you can get a free gift with a 5 star Google review or a fragrance stone with an instagram post…

I find that to be incredibly dishonest but FINE, we’ll participate for a free bag. My boyfriend ended up writing a pretty honest review about the egg tarts and drinks but when he went to redeem his free gift, they read his post and didn’t think it was good enough????????? They literally airdropped him the exact copy to post online. You can clearly tell it’s AI because they use the hyphen in the message…. And you can see it all throughout this page’s review!!!

It’s a shame they let their pretty decent products be ruined by incentivized reviews. You have people that are even willing to post honest feedback with 5 stars but still want to control the narrative? I would have 1 starred this post but again, the food and...

Delicious drinks, beautiful space, and friendly service. Tried White Snow and Super Avocado — both perfect.

….Is the AI generated review the store wants posted along with a 5 star review in exchange for a gift on opening day.

Normally, I’d only take time out to write a review if the food or drink was so exceptional it compelled me to do so. And this is not one of the post. However I do feel compelled to give a honest review for anyone who scrolls and wonders how every single review here is 5 stars with no substance or simplified two liners that is AI generated.

The food here is actually not bad. The egg tarts are pretty good. Soft flaky crust with a nice sweet and eggy custard, slightly on the oilier side but good. The pork floss was good as well. No complaints on the food and the drinks were florally and fragrant. All in all, their products are pretty good. Decent enough that I’d say is worth trying….HOWEVER, all of that is overshadowed by the unethical means of trying to market themselves through incentivized reviews to boost their ratings. I had originally posted a honest review praising their items only to be told that the store would airdrop me a prompt for me to post instead. This can be verified by looking through the reviews and finding the same prompts posted by multiple different people. If there was anything I could’ve overlooked as aggressive marketing, this I could not. It is a shame because their products are decently good but held back by questionable marketing tactics. The product should speak for itself as should their customers.

The 1 extra star is solely because the food is decent. The other is for their choice of marketing and...

it's predatory to force a tipping system and have customers awkwardly click small 4 buttons to change the tip to $0. Had the kale drink and it wasn't blended that well. The tart was good. EDIT 10/25/25: Seems like they made a button for "No Tip" now. I've been tracking the reviews for this place since it opened literally like last week (soft opening) and within a day or two I saw the reviews jump from 7 to 293 reviews which is REALLY weird and sudden and reviews don't blow up like that out of nowhere unless there's bribery, complaints, controversy or botting 🤷🏻‍♀️ EDIT 10/27/25: 293 to 476 reviews is a crazy jump and I see that during their grand opening they are running a promotion where if you submit a 5 star review (Yes, it has to be 5 stars) + photo with their AI-generated praises then you get a tote bag or some scented rock.. I don't really respect businesses that desperately pushes for incentivized reviews. It is unfair to other honest businesses around them (especially smaller businesses that work 10x harder to earn those positive reviews) and also misleading to your customers. This is why I changed...