Pearl Cafe

Ordered a combo bowl and spam musubi. The portion is huge but the food itself is just Ok. If you’re looking for quantity then this place won’t disappoint you. I also ordered a boba drink and there’s nothing special there either. Basic food. Basic drinks. Nothing amazing.

This is a really nice and cute café that serves very hearty meals. The comfort food is fantastic — I generally get the loco moco. The portions are also huge and a great value.

I come here often and get the musubi combo or the combo plate and its absolutely delicious. Their bubble tea is okay, just make sure to shake it every now to mix in the powder. The place is clean, cozy, smells great, and has free wifi. The food comes out pretty quickly also.

To start off, I probably made a mistake by ordering their strawberry milk tea and not a more basic milk tea. It was super sweet. All I could taste was the strawberry syrup (?). It’s always nice to have chunks of fruit tho and plenty of boba. Unfortunately, the flavor of strawberry was too overpowering for my liking.

Fantastic Hawaiian food, decent smoothies. I’ve been craving avocado smoothies and got a chance to try the ones here, which wasn’t half bad! Being the glutton that we were, my friend and I got the spam musubi, chicken katsu musubi, and the combo bbq grill to share. The short ribs and beef were perfection, and the musubi was on point. I wish I had room in my stomach for more!

I have been coming here on & off for about 5 years. My standard drink is milk tea with pearls. The pearls are always soft and chewy so you can’t go wrong with this place. They use TapMango as their loyalty membership.
This café also serves smoothies, espresso, and Hawaiian Style bbq rice plates. They have a clean restroom in the back & have free wifi. It’s also a nice place to work or study on your laptop because they have several tables with wall outlets and lots of natural lighting.
I recently tried their teriyaki chicken bowl ($ 8.95) which came with lots of steamed vegetables and white rice. Portion was huge and chicken was tasty. Chicken was all dark meat and already had flavor so I didn’t need to use the teriyaki sauce that I got on the side.

Think I ordered the classic breakfast plate. Instead of real ham, I got slices of processed sandwich ham. Cheap, salty and filled with artificial shit. The breakfast potatoes was the same kind you get at McDonalds: potato, salt and artificial ingredients in small pieces forced into a rectangle shape thing and deep fried in oil. Yuck. The fried eggs, though, was normal. The udon noodles was also a let-​down. It was about $ 10 with tax and it was this huge bowl of broth and some udons in the bottom. They also put a few vegetables — the cheapest kind like carrots, broccoli and sliced squashed — to make it seem more substantial. I suspect the udon probably was the «instant» kind that you get at the conventional supermarket, too, because this was what it tasted like.
A few weeks ago, I also got their bbq beef dish (with the option of macaroni salad or rice) and all I can say was gross. The beef was really, really old and the sauce it was aging in was really salty. So you get this pile of old, salty meat. The chicken version was just a salty, old and simply disgusting. And if you order their smoothies or bubble teas, you might want to take a look at the spoonfuls of sugar they put into this brightly colored artificial package of «flavor». Most of the employees here also do not speak English — wonder if these were the cheapest form of employees the owner would choose to hire.
The café setting is not bad, but, in terms of pricing, taste and quality, the Chinese man who owns this café and Lucky — across the way — in the San Antonio Shopping Center really needs to respect food, customers and a business better. You don’t just copy or fake real culinary talent with really bad copycat versions of real food. The only people who dine at any of his «businesses» are poor people who either do not have real choices of where to eat for lunch or dinner or they simply have not had a chance to eat at a really nice restaurant with fresh, real and seasonal ingredients that will appeal to their palate, class and wallet.
Places like this Pearl Café makes Burger King and Taco Bell seem like a better alternative. If you want to get real food — real ingredients are involved — you might want to look elsewhere. If you want processed, fake food, you should go to Wal-​Mart which is just a few meters away and get the same poor quality of human «food» for ¹⁄₃ the price as Pearl Café. This place is a total downer.

Music great, coffee good, food is not all that healthy (be smart about what you order)

SUMMARY: If you get a cashier girl in the afternoon, repeat your order, once, twice, three times on the safe side. But they’ll probably get it wrong still. So, be prepared to defend yourself from being wrongfully accused. Asian guy is really nice. The milk tea was okay.
LONG STORY:
I’m one of those absolutely weird people that like to order a hot boba drink that melts everything in the cup into a disgusting, sticky ball made for use in a boba straw spitfire fight. I like my cold drinks on cold days and hot drinks on hot days, no matter what happens to the drink. Unfortunately, if you come here, you need to make absolutely sure you repeat your drink order to the cashier or else you’ll leave with an accusation and a nasty taste in your mouth. And this isn’t even from the drink, although the drink really was just meh.
I’ve worked in food service for a good portion of my life, I know how you’re supposed to treat customers even on your worst days. I don’t think I was being unreasonable for what I ordered, I was very well-​mannered and did not act like the cashier girl that took my order.
I ordered a HOT coffee milk tea from the girl, who was barely paying attention. Shortly afterwards, my friend waits to order her food, while the cashier girl got on the phone to talk to her friend. Take care of your personal business on your break or something, come on. Finally, my friend ordered a drink and some food. The girl making drinks called out an iced coffee milk tea and no one responded. So, she put it in the fridge… Okay, makes sense. But then my friend’s drink come out and I was still waiting. Perhaps it took a bit more effort to make a hot drink. I waited a while longer and watched as the girl cashier that I ordered from made herself look busy, which wasn’t too hard to do, cause there was nothing to do! So, I walk up to ask the Asian owner on the status of my hot drink, and she looks for the order. Finds it. And asks the cashier girl that took my order, why my drink wasn’t made. And the cashier girl points at me and says, «SHE didn’t order a HOT drink. No, SHE never ordered a HOT one. SHE never told me she wanted a HOT drink.» I looked at them with awe. I’m standing right here. Staring at you. Accusing me of not telling you what I wanted. Ugh. At this point, I didn’t even want the drink anymore. Just a nasty, nasty taste left in my mouth. Luckily, one of the workers, really nice guy, helped me out with my drink. He was the redeeming factor of this visit. Hot boba drinks don’t normally have pre-​made, pre-​hole-​punched tops and he made it a point to tell me this, so he offered to cut a hole in it for me. However, the lid broke because of where it was cut. So, I just asked for a new lid and walked out. I couldn’t stand it in there anymore with those accusing eyes staring down my every move.

Surprisingly a good place to work on a weekday — I stayed for 5 hours and cranked out a paper and they even let me open a tab since I didn’t hit the $ 8 credit card limit.
Food was comforting, I got the breakfast of two eggs, rice, and two slices of grilled spam. The bubble tea is just ok (get the jelly instead of the boba) but they also have hot tea and coffee which is nice.

I don’t have anything SIGNIFICANT to write. I ordered a jasmine green milk tea. I like it. Its premade and tastes a bit milky/​powdery, but the tea is still distinctive. Its also not TOO sweet. It tastes like a tea with 75−80%sugar. About $ 3.50 for a REGULAR (16oz) drink so its probably hard for them to compete with the 20−24oz offered elsewhere. Tap Mango rewards instead of 5 stars.
This place is pretty precious though. They have pearl milk teas, smoothies, baked goods, coffee/​espresso, and a full out menu with burgers and Asian food (Hawaiian BBQ). SMELLS SO GOOOD! looks like a big portion too. A very interesting place that would be cool to come check out for food or a different drink. They have WiFi so if you come when its empty then this is a great place to study at! However during peak lunch and dinner time, priority goes to dine in customers.
The girl working was disdainful. She wasn’t rude, but Ive worked in a milk tea/​boba café before. I’m very big on customer service, and you should greet your customer or try to smile. She didn’t even really look at me. Girl, there’s more to life than going through the motions.

‘Went here for the bubble tea & coffee, it was good. The bubble milk tea are pretty standard (?powder-​based?) flavors. I had the honey milk boba, it was subtle.
Coffee’s not exactly their specialty, but it’s okay here.

Good food and friendly service with a diverse menu. It’s easy to walk up to the counter and order a drink (boba tea, smoothie, coffee) or order an entire meal and enjoy sitting in the causal atmosphere. I come here a great deal for their boba teas and tried one of their rice bowls the other day which was HUGE! This was enough for two meals and well worth its price, plus the teriyaki sauce was delicious.
Their boba teas also come with pearls (don’t make you pay extra – what a concept!)
Side note: They don’t take AmEx (so make sure you have another type of payment if you are paying with plastic).

a review JUST FOR THE BBQ chicken Masubi that i ordered to-​GO on Eat24 (and mind you this order was ready very quickly)
–BBQ chicken masubi: the BBQ chicken was good and moist plus for a snack this baby is just $ 3 and pretty filling. it also comes with a teriyaki-​like dipping sauce
i hear on Unilocal that the service isn’t great so avoid that and take your order to-​go

Impressed with the overview of the place. It is right by Sushi 88 so after lunch/​dinner, you can come here! That is what we did!!! Then perhaps you can go to Kohl’s which is in the same vicinity.
Indulged on — Thai pearl tea…

Great place to do work and get breakfast. Nestled in a completely unassuming strip mall, this place is super cute when you walk in. Big tables, fast wifi, and never too crowded.
The breakfast omusubi really hits the spot in terms of my Asian palette (I could eat anything savory for breakfast), but could be too heavy in the morning for other people.
I enjoyed their Hawaiian bowls too– their bbq chicken and short ribs were quite good.

I like that this place is on my way to work. I have tried the jasmine and black milk teas, and while I like the mild floral taste of the jasmine, I love the stronger tea flavor in the black.
I can’t wait to try other things. I keep eyeing the mint matcha milkshake special
The only thing that keeps be from giving this a better rating is that their boba is pretty bland. There is no hint of sweetness like other places. And it is pretty soft. I prefer my boba a little sweet, and a tad chewier.

What a cute café! Came by the Pearl Café after eating a delicious dinner at Sushi 88 (right next door), and ordering a drink for dessert here made my overall dining experience pretty awesome. Their menu has a great variety, but I ended up ordering the Coffee Milk Tea, which was pretty good! A perfect mix of milk tea and coffee, I was hooked. I noticed that the boba balls were a little smaller than what I was used to, but no problem. Service was good — within a couple of minutes our drinks were ready! I appreciated the ambience of the café. Really cute, lots of chairs, and seating too. They also had other drinks and snacks available if you weren’t into the whole ordering a specialty drink thing. :)
Definitely check out this boba place if you’re in the area. Really cute place!

As I was desperately looking for a place to study during this critical finals week, my friend told me about this café with boba, food, wifi, and parking. As you can imagine that’s not easy to come by, living in SF I never able to find a nice café with free parking sigh.
Came here and they have plenty of seats, not alot of plugs for my laptop though. Food wise they have alot of selections, hawaian food and american breakfast food. I tried the loco moco with katsu and I’d give it a ³⁄₅. They give a BIGGG portion but taste isnt that great. The downside about this place is that they dont sell tea??? I wanted strawberry tea with no milk and they only sell milk teas with boba. Oh well. I got their matcha green tea latte and thats a ⁵⁄₅! Really good and creamy! Definately will get that again.
Overall, I’d come back here again to appreacite what they offer, I usually go to Happy Donuts to study but I find this place to be better and cleaner so definately will be tryin out different food and drink!

We came by for lunch and ordered two hawaiian bbq chicken. My order came with 4 pieces of chicken, 2 scoops of rice, and 1 scoop of macaroni.
The hawaiian food here tastes better than L&L and seems to be better bang for the buck.
Neither of us was able to finish our orders and we had enough leftovers for another meal. The leftovers tasted just as good after we heated it up for dinner.