Maruwu Seicha - Palo Alto — Restaurant in Palo Alto

🌟🌟🌟🌟 She's evolving, darlings! The aesthetics always served, but now the operations are catching up!

🔥 HOT TEA UPDATE! 🔥 May 2025

Your girl made a return visit, and honey, things are looking up! Ceiling? Fixed! Line? Faster with two cashiers! Those Tesla-adjacent boxes? Hidden in gorgeous patterned bags!

BUT! The matcha latte still came serving third-degree burn realness - couldn't even hold the cup! Flavor's still playing shy, though the milk was creamy perfection.

ORIGINAL REVIEW Nov 2024

🌟🌟🌟 The vibes are immaculate but honey, at these prices? The execution needs to slay harder than these falling ceiling tiles!

Listen up, tea enthusiasts! Your girl just dropped $17 at Maruwa Seicha in Palo Alto, and I'm here to spill ALL the tea! 💅

The DRAMA started with a 20-minute wait after opening (11am), giving me plenty of time to clock the messy ceiling tiles living their own independent journey! And while we're reading, what's the tea with all these empty seats being held hostage by backpacks while the line's wrapped around like a pearl necklace? Not the correct energy, bestie! And don't get me started on the non-service animals giving unauthorized performances!

Now, the AESTHETICS are serving Japanese realness - that seigaiha wave pattern on their green paper bags is STUNNING, and the cups are giving us Japanese poetry realness with their vertical tea manifestos! The branding team understood the assignment!

But child, let me tell you about these Tar Tar cheese tarts ($4.50) - looking suspiciously like they're wearing a Tesla logo costume! And the gag is, they're advertising gooey centers but serving fully baked realness. The matcha flavor in the tart? Subtle queen, too subtle!

The hot matcha latte ($7.90) came out serving SCALDING realness, honey - and I don't mean that as a compliment! Once it finally cooled to safe-for-this-queen temperature, it actually gave what it was supposed to give - creamy oat milk fantasy with a nice matcha moment, not too sweet but not bitter either.

The café was serving noise levels so loud the cashier couldn't hear a thing - giving 'trying to order at the club' energy! Not their fault, sweetie, but someone needs to think about the acoustics! 🗣️

Bottom line, sweeties: While they're serving Japanese tea house VISUAL realness, the price point is giving luxury but the execution is giving amateur hour. Time to shape up... or at least fix that ceiling before it...

We have been to this location a few times. Overall, the drinks, cheese tarts, and gelato are all really good. This gets 5/5 for me.

What knocks my rating to 3 stars is based on how they deliver the orders. If you order an assortment of items, for some reason they all have a slightly different form of fulfilling your order. For cheese tarts, they will automatically make you your box and call your number out. This is usually the fastest because they’re ready to go already. But for ice cream/gelato we’ve noticed you have to tell the people at the pick up counter your number and they will make it for you. This causes so much confusion because people are waiting to get their number called which causes a big crowd and difficulty in getting to the counter. Then for drinks, they call your number but if you ordered cheese tarts your number would get called twice or you might even get a different number. Basically it makes the entire pick up process pretty stressful especially since it’s been really crowded at this location lately.

Also one more note…. If the gelato is out and needs a refill it will take no joke 20 minutes. This is especially frustrating that there is no communication around this when the line is long. So you can wait in like for 20-30 minutes only for the gelato to be out as you are about to order then you gotta wait another 20 minutes for a scoop of ice cream. The store needs to be way more communicative about what is in stock and not at the beginning of the line (see another example of when they weren’t selling matcha for a few days and didn’t tell anyone lol)

A note to the owner!!! I think these can definitely be improved upon. Please improve your pick up order process. It’s causing significant crowding by the entry and exit of the store and turns us off...

I also had a really terrible customer service experience with the same girl others have commented about here. It all started wrong when cashier printed out the my order, where I noticed he put "half sweet" on my order when I asked for "full sweet". I quickly communicated with a male barista that I wanted it full sweet and he was if he'll do that for me. When my order was called out, I politely asked another male worker if my drink was "full sweet" since the cup said "half sweet", so I just wanted to confirm that. Out of no where, this Asian worker budges into the conversation and rudely yells "there's sugar in them!" and quickly turned around to walk away. I thought that was really rude of her, as that's not what I was implying. I was asking if my drink was "full sweet" because the cashier messed up and put "half sweet" on my order, so I believe I had every right to ask a simple question to make sure my drink was made how I wanted it. I felt disrespected and did not appreciate her smart mouthing me like I'm uneducated of matcha. I ended up asking for a refund as the drink was too thick and overall wasn't enjoyable, especially after that encounter. This took place Friday 1/31/25 around 9:45 PM. There were two girls on this shift. The one I am talking about and had a terrible experience with was the one with the ponytail and she was wearing a black skirt during this shift. I hope her customer service can be improved, as I came in very excited to try this place after driving 30 minutes from San Jose just to leave very...