Tan-Cha — Restaurant in San Gabriel

Tan-Cha has made its way down to the SGV, making the San Gabriel location their second storefront apart from Rowland Heights. They're known for their cheese foam and tiramisu puff cream drinks. I haven't been back to the Rowland Heights location, but it seems like the San Gabriel menu has expanded with several more types of unique drinks, which is pretty cool.

Tan-Cha is located in the Hilton plaza, so parking can be really tough, especially when there's an event at the hotel or you come during later hours. There's parking on the ground level, but they also have an underground parking section. Storefront is not that big, so when we walked up, we were overwhelmed by the line forming out the door. Warm, yellow lights make for a very inviting ambience, but the amount of people wanting a drink was a bit off-putting. Definitely feel like they are trying to appeal to the IGsters/high school/college crowd with the solid grey wall and "Tan-Cha" lit up with lettered lights. Not too many tables/chairs, so expect a lot of standing if you're waiting around for a drink.

They also serve Lady M crepe cakes - at around $10 a slice.

While I like Tan-Cha's drinks, I feel like I see more cons than pros about this place, which would deter me from making frequent visits. -Prices are on the expensive side, and there's only one set size for the drinks. Some drinks come in the taller, longer cups, but not sure if the size is much bigger than the shorter, fatter cups. -Cash only -Drinks are more on the "unique" side, so there aren't the standard go-to drinks that other places have

Ordered the high mountain green tea with cheese foam ($4.50) - with the addition of boba, I paid a little over $5 for a decently tasting cup of tea. The cheese foam is very similar to other store's Hokkaido milk cream, etc. except that the taste of Tan-Cha's is a bit stronger. My friends enjoy shaking the drink to mix the cream and tea, but I prefer drinking it separately. Tea was good quality - very pure and strong. Boba was just decent; probably won't pay the additional cost to get boba if I return. I guess a lot of drink places are getting pricier, but I was a bit bummed when I found out they only had one size for the drinks.

tl;dr - A decent place to visit if you want quality tea but don't mind paying a more premium price and waiting a bit longer for your drink. Due to the location, probably won't be coming here too...

THIS PLACE IS CASH ONLY! (I made a mistake once going in with no cash so I had to go back lol)

Roasted Oolong Milk Tea: Oolong is made decently. I always get mine at 25% sweet since I don’t like overly sweet things and the level of sweetness is perfect. My only complaint is that the boba were not as chewy as I wanted it to be (although maybe we came at a bad time before the make a new batch).

Lady M Green Tea Mill crepe: I absolutely love the texture, so light and fluffy~ The matcha powder balances out the cream filling and its a perfect blend of the sweet and hint of astringency due to the matcha. You can tell that they don’t cheap out on their ingredients too because you would be able to tell very easily if they are using cheap matcha powder or not. (I mean they better not be using cheap ingredients because they are charging $9 per slice). But you get what you pay for for the most part.

Ambiance: Fairly cute, simple and modern and have decent...

Fifty cents extra to use a credit card, boo! The drinks here are actually not that bad, but I just can't justify the price compared to all the other choices in this area.

I went ahead and tried the royal ceylon milk tea with tiramisu foam since it was their most popular drink. The tea itself was decent/okay. It reminded me of 'hokkaido milk teas' from other places, but the foam was definitely my favorite part of the drink. They had a really nice cup that you could turn the lid to sip instead of using a straw and they included some crunchy chocolate balls on the top of the drink.

Glad I tried this place once but kind of not surprised to see it almost always empty. Way too expensive when The Alley and Wushiland are right across the street.

Parking is pretty easy in this plaza though due to the underground parking lot, so...