85C Bakery Cafe - Irvine
| Address: | 2700 Alton Pkwy #123, Irvine, CA 92606, USA |
| Phone: | +1 949-553-8585 |
| Site: | 85cbakerycafe.com |
| Rating: | 4.4 |
| Working: | 6:30AM–11PM 6:30AM–11PM 6:30AM–11PM 6:30AM–11PM 6:30AM–12AM 6:30AM–12AM 7:30AM–11PM |
Location
Photos 100
Reviews 5
JA
Jason Lum
85 C I owe you an update! It wasnt fair to keep the review at 1 star for close to 3 years, because the experience, service, and quality were absolute crap. Now that this is not the only location in the US, thank you for opening stores in both SoCal and NorCal. All the crazy non-Irvine people are gone. No offense, but locals are happy! :) The lines are a lot better. Even during the busiest times I never wait more than 10 minutes max for a drink. Knock on wood! Please dont go on the times when I go. Thank you! If you do, holla at ya boi! Complaints to complements updated: Bad selection of items- BETTER! Now, I can find what I want more than 95% of the time. Sometimes my favorite item is missing. No more search and pray to find items. Coffee quality- Much better! So good I am cheating on Starbucks. This means consistency no cups full of ice or syrup. Two people get the job done faster. Thank you for addressing my issue. Drinks now have the number, item, and time stamp on it. No confusion about people stealing your drink. The food line goes a lot faster. You can actually ask question. In the past, if you need Happy Birthday and candles with your cake good luck. Need cup tray? Now, the customer service is responsive. I think 85C has focused on hiring quality employees that want to work here. The days of lazy Asian frat and sorority people are over. Although, eye candy is gone, but I guess service is more important. Beside this place is no Cafe Lu. Ha ha. I will let go of the 1 star grudge for now, because I am 4th on the frequent check-ins. 85C is close to living up to the hype. I gotta show my respect because I love the coffee. I like the additions of punch cards and drink promotion. I feel like you want me to come back. Recommended! Bravo 85C! Bravo!
TI
Tim Whitmore
Our family has always loved the weekend treat of 85°c bakery cafe, I have even convinced our irvine office to treat the staff to thier savory treats on occasion, but recently I had an experience that unlike the baked goods left a bad taste in my mouth. My wife is the director of a preschool in Fountain Valley and were hosting a preschool prom they set out to seek area businesses for donations to be auctioned off or raffle to raise money for repairs and upkeep. Because of their sought-after Sweets I decided to approach 85°C in regards to a donation I submitted the requested paperwork my email and even left a hard copy several weeks in advance. After never hearing back yea or ney, the week before the event I started calling I was told repeatedly that someone would call and let me know either way this went on for the entire week. A few hours prior to the event I finally went into the location to find out the verdict, the store manager on duty was extremely rude and was only concerned with convincing me that she would never talk to me and that I never went through her through all of this. Im not upset because they didnt choose to donate, I understand completely not all requests are granted but at 85c was one of only two or three that completely blew us off and refused to offer the professionalism to get back to those that have wilfully submitted the request in the way requestef and dont give the requesting agencies the runaround. Know this when a businesses chooses to treat their loyal customers in a nonprofessional manner it does and will continue to reflect on their business in the future. A good business treats their customers with the same respect and loyalty they expect their customers to treat them, otherwise the relationship is severed.
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Felix Lee
85C Bakery is one of the most overrated destinations in California. It is a chain in Taiwan that my oversea friends skip because there are local bakeries and coffee shops far superior to the "Starbucks of Taiwan". However, 85C is wildly popular in Irvine, to the point where people can tolerate a 30 minutes queue for bread and coffee. Some breads and pastries at 85C are extremely oily, especially the savory types. Verify this yourself by placing a pizza bread, taro bun, milk bread, or brioche on top of a napkin and then microwaving them for 20 seconds. Remove the bread and you can observe the amount of oil absorbed by the napkin. Everything tastes better when excessive amounts of butter is applied inside the baked breads. The 85C breads appear to be light upon first bite, but your stomach may feel heavy afterwards. The most advertised drink on the 85C menu, sea salt ice coffee, is nothing special. It is simply an iced Americano with sea salt whipped cream. Everything tastes better when excessive sugar is added to a beverage. For a 16 or 24 oz beverage, only 1 to 2 oz of it is espresso while the remainder consists of steamed water and cream. You are not really drinking coffee, only a diluted espresso with sweet cream. For the reasons listed above, I dont think 85C Bakery is as exciting as people make it sound. It is not a destination worth driving more than an hour for. However, if you are local, 85C is not a bad place to purchase a sea salt green tea or berrytale as a quick breakfast to-go.
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Shohei U
This place has awesome bread/pastries/cake/coffee. I dont usually go for the cake and coffee, but I frequent the bread/pastries section of the store. My favorites are: Marble Taro bread Brioche (rectangular one) Taro Swirl The brioche is the fluffiest bread that I have ever eaten. Its like biting into a cloud with a hint of sweetness. I need to cut back on my carbs, but this bread is irresistible. I enjoy drinking different types of coffee, so I was curious to try the sea salt coffee. It is basically good coffee with salt. I think the salt activates more nerve endings on your tongue to give it a more round flavor. The coffee itself is high quality as well, but it didnt make me want to start making coffee with salt every morning. Try it once to see how you feel about it. This place gets really crowded, so it might be a good idea to go during off hours, like working hours during the week, or with a friend during peak hours, like over the weekend. The reason why you bring a friend is so that as soon as the two of you arrive, one person can get in line for the register, and the other person can get in line to enter the bread/pastry section. Once you get your bread, you just hand it to your friend in the register line, and youve cut your waiting-in-line time by 50%. This long wait is the only reason why this place gets 4 stars instead of 5.
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Frederick C
Maybe its Chinese Pastry in general, maybe its this place. But it seems to look better than it tastes. There is just so much hype here, with their lines out the door. Maybe that makes it worse for me as my expectations set so high. I have tried so many of their pastries and I always feel disappointed. Mass produced food that that is over rated in my opinion. The media always compares this place to Starbucks and 7-Eleven. They talk about the huge number of locations in Taiwan, yet they never write articles raving about the pastries. . Asian HIpsters that frequent this place: let me ask you a question.... Do you rave about the pastries at 7-Eleven and Starbucks and wait in huge lines for them at these places? Because those places have pastries too and all of these places, including 85 degrees, only get written up about in regards to the number of locations they have and how big they are. Go to JJ Bakery off of Jeffrey and get the Strawberry filled Mochi instead. Or even go Bon Epi and get their pastries. Even the plain Sugar Toast blows away anything at 85C!
