Why Thirsty

Pretty close to eating in Taiwan, if you ask me. Having been to Taipei on several occasions, I can safely say the Sweet Pork Chop with Rice is spot on here. I tried the Railroad. It was served with one ample scoop of white rice, stir fried broccoli, cabbage, pickled spicy radish (I think), corn scrambled with egg, and one soy sauce egg. The entire dish worked well. The sweet pork chop was not overly sweet yet savory and tender. Each bite paired well with the rice, pickled radish, and corn/​egg. I especially liked the pickled spicy radish because it elevated the dish with that extra punch of seasoning and spice. This is a must try, but other menu items sound like solid choices too.
I also tried the Formosa Sweet Tea with Grass Jelly. Another huge hit as I am picky about my tea and grass jelly. The tea was fresh brewed and it had a preserved fig that gave it an organic-​like sweetness. The grass jelly was clearly made in house and not store bought in a can.
The restaurant itself is small and not very easy to find. It’s sorta blended with other stores in a strip mall on Rosemead Blvd. Just look for Trader Joe’s and you’ll find it. During lunch, there was a short wait. Service was timely and friendly. Enjoy!

I came here for the name.
The picture on Unilocal all look very delicious. The food was average but I was a little concerend about how quick it came out after the order. 5 min? And the food came out even faster than our drinks. That can’t be fresh everything. But still, it’s a nice place to come once in a while.

I’ve only had the tea here, not the food which is apparently pretty good.
I tried the highly recommended Assam milk tea and it didn’t really have flavor… even when I asked for less sugar, I couldn’t taste the supposedly deep flavor of the tea.
Maybe I just received a bad one but I wasn’t too impressed.
Place is pretty small and not the cleanest.
It is located next to the Bhanu indian grocery. The sign is really faded and the place looks closed most of the time even when it is opened.

Pork rib combo is sooo good, a big piece of meat with rice and vegetables, a very healthy choice. And the jasmine milk tea is flavorful and not too sweet, which is exactly what I like.

As a resident of Arcadia, I am surrounded by little Taiwanese, café-​style restaurants/​tea houses that serve popcorn chicken, pork chop rice, etc. They are all pretty decent; however I was pleasantly surprised with this place. I ordered the braised pork with noodles and my sister ordered the sausage fried rice. The pork was super tender. It was tasty, not too oily and hit the spot. The portions are also decent in size, not too small and leftovers enough for another meal. The presentation was good. I can’t wait to go back again!

Like most other reviewers, I love their railroad pork shop with rice or noodle. Pork shop is not fatty and roasted after fried so it is tender and stay tasty after taking home. I have eaten almost every single pork chop place in near by area in the past 30+ years and feel the pork chop here is the best at present time, as good if not better than the pork chop bento on Taiwan train.
I like the beef noodle soup also but wish it would be less sweet. Trader Joe’s is scheduled moving out at the end of Feb. 2016 and hope parking will become easier.

I still enjoy coming here about twice a month. Their railroad is my go to order and it never fails me. The thin yellow dry noodles are the best. 5 stars
Other dishes:
Spicy basil chicken over rice — 4 stars
Popcorn chicken — 5 stars
Kimchi cucumber — 2 stars
Spicy beef noodles — 4 stars
Service — 2 stars
The waitresses here don’t seem to care much anymore. It took about 20 minutes for my party to get water. Asking for our check took awhile as well. I don’t expect great service in Chinese places, but let’s try pay attention to the front of the store. Its because the owner/​manager isn’t there much anymore.

Same plaza as Trader Joe’s, next door to the awesome Indian restaurant/​grocery store. We popped in after dinner to grab a boba passion tea (how can you resist when their sign lists «real tea» as an offering). I’ve enjoyed boba for 20 years (dang I feel old), since back before it was popular to now, and this is the best boba I have ever tasted. My favorite used to be sweetheart in Berkeley but this one’s sheer perfection — perfect consistency and sweetness, almost smooth and creamy finish… Divine.

I really, really wanted to like Why Thirsty, and my opinion is finally coming around after multiple attempts.
I hear people rave about how their tea is fresh brewed and so superior to other places. I would agree that their tea drinks are good, but I think a lot of places are good and this place was no more memorable to me than the others, except for the fact that I’ve been told by so many people how great it is.
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CLOSED ON SUNDAYS… Dang! Everyone needs a break, but why not on a slow weekday instead? Let’s face it. Everybody does their grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s on the weekend, and I always come here forgetting that they’re closed on Sunday. They must be doing really well for themselves to turn away so much business.
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RAILROAD PORK… I like that it doesn’t have bones in it. This dish is their flying standard, and is decent. I like that they include plenty of veggies.
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PREMIUM BEEF RICE… I didn’t like this. I think it was covered in that Chinese Sha-​Cha Jiang paste made from dried fish/​shrimp, which made it super salty.
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MINCE MEAT RICE BOWL… This was OK. It was kind of salty due to the presence of lots of pickled vegetables. I’m more a fan of TBay’s version, or even Tea Station’s version.
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OCTOPUS TOTS… I didn’t like this. Octopus Tots must be the cleverest marketing spin I’ve ever heard. It’s really just a squid ball, cousin of the fish ball.
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TOFU TOTS… I didn’t like this. It was totally covered in pepper salt and tasted like MSG overload.
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LAVENDER MILK TEA… This was tasty. It had a very fragrant lavender flavor throughout. I ordered «less sweet» and it still came out very sweet, which was fine and what I expected.
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TAKE-​OUT… I ordered take-​out recently of a Railroad Pork and Mince Meat Rice Bowl and it was surprisingly ready in about 5 minutes. Their takeout packaging is nice and feels high quality, which doesn’t go unappreciated.
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SERVICE… Service is friendly. It’s a tiny mom-​and-​pop sized restaurant, so it’s also difficult to be ignored.
Overall, I’d probably give Why Thirsty 3.5 stars but rounded up to 4 because they’re growing on me and I really want to like them due to how convenient their location is for me.

Why not? First time here and I was definitely not disappointed! Parking was abundant in the private Trader Joes/​Bhanu parking lot, and we got seated pretty quickly.
I ordered the Popcorn Chicken Rice, which came out on a huge tray with a healthy (pfttt) portion of Asian popcorn chicken, rice, corn, steamed veggies, and pickled veggies. Everything tasted really good but minus one star because my broccoli wasn’t fresh (I saw small black spots on a lot of em).
Also taste-​tested my friends dishes and can say the pork chop was good, the railroad was okay, and the lo mien was good; but I still like the Popcorn Chicken the best, though it was probably msg-​laced (why thirsty? That’s why!).
The meal is well-​worth the cost; super affordable. 4-​stars.

The service here is kind of slow. You have to somewhat aggressively wave to the staff to get their attention for anything (taking orders, water, getting the bill, etc).
Other than the slow service, I really enjoyed the railroad pork. The dish was a decent size and the pork was bursting with flavors. I liked that the meal felt like a well balanced meal — there was a lot of veggies and protein!
We also purchased the Tofu Tots (with medium spice). This dish was good, but there was nothing unique about it. It felt like this can be purchased at any café. The medium spice is not spicy at all… but it was nice to pick at.
We also purchased their Lavender Milk Tea — half sweet. I cannot imagine how sweet the full sweetness drink would taste, since our drink was already pretty sweet. The drink was quite satisfying and it was decently priced.
There’s a $ 10 minimum if you use a credit card. Otherwise, you’d have to use cash. I really enjoyed my time here and I expect to come back and try their other dishes!

The drinks have gone down hill since the manager guy is no longer there all the time. He used to make one of best Formosa milk teas and it would be worth $ 4. I have been back a couple of times and this is going to be my last time to get to drinks. The Formosa lacks any tea flavor and it taste like water down tea with half and half.

Not too impressed overall.
Waitresses there are just no clue. We ordered 2 meals, 2 drinks, and 1 appetizer. Spicy Cucumber was good. Drink… Despite of ordering Large yet «regular» size came, it tasted good.
We waited for a while. One meal came but not another one. Waited and waited… Waitresses were just having fun chit chatting and not paying attention. We actually had to walk up to the counter and get their attention. The kitchen «forgot@ to cook. The noodle was obviously under cooked and certainly not worth the money. No apologies from them nor nothing. Again, had to walk up to the counter to get check.
Probably will not go back there again. Not worth the money.

I had the Railroad Pork Rice dish, and loved it! Besides the good and authentic food, I just realized the owners are Christians or upon my speculation of the Bible verse on the cup sleeve.
However, I did not give this restaurant 5 stars simply because I have a feeling, however remote, the owners were Christians. But rather, I like the service and the authenticity of the business.

I am not a good actor.
Sometimes I can apparently fool people into thinking I’m an honest-​to-​God Chinese guy who speaks and reads Chinese (and not a lazy ABC who decided watching Saturday morning cartoons and eating cereal was more important than attending Chinese school). But after spending more than five minutes at Why Thirsty furiously scribbling on my iPhone to translate the Chinese menu in front of me, the gig was up and my server ended my misery by giving me an English menu and saying «you can match it with this.» For the record, her English was much better than my Chinese.
I had a minced meat rice bowl and cold chamomile tea with no sugar, ordering it all in Chinese (I may not be a good actor, but I am a persistent one). The thing was enormous for the price — $ 6.99 as of this writing, the large bowl utterly packed with dark bits of braised pork and a whole braised egg and a side plate of about half a dozen different steamed or preserved vegetables. It was on par with some of the better Taiwanese restaurants in the area, although if anything it was less greasy than I had expected/​secretly hoped.
While I was eating my «mi zhi lu rou fan» (that was more for my reference than yours, so I don’t have to look it up again), I saw families, headphone-​wearing students w/​laptops and a group of friends with board games all come in. Chinese pop music videos — and even some old J-​pop — floated languorously across the TV. This is basically the epitome of the Taiwanese café. Maybe they should get some book shelves and stock them with manga for the hell of it.
Why Thirsty is a small café with a solid menu of Taiwanese fare, a menu just as large for drinks, sweet servers and no pretension. I’d love to — and probably will — reunite with it soon. I should also point out that it serves an area north of where a lot of the competing SGV restaurants are, which makes it a convenient choice for those who live closer to San Marino or Pasadena.
As well as those who might just need a little work on their acting.

I tried their chinese sausage and popcorn chicken plate. The popcorn chicken plate is worth it because its a few dollars for a plate and im pretty sure you get a larger portion of popcorn chicken if you get the plate. The chinese sausage was disappointing. I wanted something close to sinbala’s sausage and it was no where near it. The girls working weren’t very attentive and one of them was busy talking to her friends. Not all know english so be forewarned. Its in the same plaza as trader joes on rosemead and huntington. Lots of parking in the plaza. My boyfriend also got the french fries, which were too crispy in my opinion. Prices are cheap though. Not the best food but its cheap and open late.

TL;DR. Try the rail road pork chop and sweet potato fries with plum powder!!!
I usually shop at Trader Joe’s and I’ve always seen this place but assumed it was a drinkt/​tea shop. After doing some more research on Unilocal it actually turns out to be a tea shop with some very good food! I was really surprised…
Food I’ve tried.
Rail Road Pork Chop — think of it as a Taiwanese pork chop smothered with some type of special sauce. It is fried, then tossed in some type of sauce, so don’t expect it to be crispy like your typical pai gu fan. It is served with a few side veggies such as broccoli, corn, tomato egg, etc. I really enjoyed this dish and it was unlike anything I’ve had before!
Sweet Potato Fries with Plum Powder — What the heck is plum powder? That is exactly what I was wondering until I tried it. It reminded me of those old Asian plum candies that were little flat rolls. If you are looking for something nice and sweet this is definitely a good appetizer. The portion is very generous too! The batter on the sweet potato fries were perfect, there was a nice crisp breading and it wasn’t soggy or under fried.
Spicy Beef Stew — this is the only dish I wasn’t too fond of. It was a bit too herbally for me. It tasted like some Taiwanese/​Chinese herbs that were supposed to be good for your health. While the broth had HUGE potential, the herbs completely took away from it.
Drinks I’ve tried.
Hokkaido Milk Tea — it was just ok. A bit on the watery side and not too flavorful. I will probably try something else next time.
Service.
Service is very good here. All of the staff are friendly and attentive. Even though we asked for quite a few plates/​bowls/​etc they were always more than willing. Parking can be painful sometimes because Trader Joe’s is busy — but just remember you can always park on the other side of Petco which has another parking area.

Why thirsty is located inside the trader joes and petco plaza. Parking is a pain because so many people shop at trader joes and there’s a bunch of old people that shop in this area too. Walking inside this place I was like, wow this place is extremely small! The bathroom is located right next to where you order togo and they have two seats on the right for you to wait for your drinks/​food.
I really wanted boba milk tea, it cost $ 4.35 for a large. I was really excited to try their milk tea because I’ve been reading their Unilocal reviews and a lot of people said their milk tea was delicious. The boba was lightly warm when they handed it to me which I liked. When I took my first sip of the drink, it was watered down… Gross! I even asked for less ice and regular sugar, so I have no idea why it tasted almost like water. I even mixed it really well, and yeah, it still tasted watered down. No Bueno! The boba wasn’t even sweet; quickly & tap-​ex even tasted better. The drink had a lot of tea flavor than a milk flavor. I will definitely not come back to try the food, I’m assuming that if you get boba milk tea wrong then they will get the food wrong too.

Wasn’t a fan a few months ago but now I am! Their pork chop rice, named railroad on the menu ($ 6.99), fish fillet rice ($ 7.99), milk tea ($ 2.99), and bamboo sides ($ 4.99) were fantastic. Big portions with big flavors. People who prefer their food salty should keep in mind that the dishes here most definitely run sweeter than most Taiwanese places.
The beef noodle soup was average, and the dry beef noodle made with hot pot sauce, though flavorful, was slightly too oily for me, and for those reasons, I have to give this place a 4.
Overall, I recommend this place to anyone craving some good old Taiwanese food. Great service. Ample parking.

What an interesting name. This little place not only serves teas but food (Taiwanese Style) as well. Limited seating in the dinning area. They’re located in a plaza with Trader Joes, Petco, & next door to an Indian Deli. Parking is ample but can be difficult when it’s busy time.
We ordered Lavender Black Tea. Deep strong tea with a floral scent. Interesting flavor. Passion Green Tea was good. Strong tea & passion fruit flavor w/​the seeds. You can ask for less sugar if you prefer it not as sweet, or less ice. They brew the teas when you order.
They have lunch specials. Menus are in English & Chinese. We ordered Spicy Cucumber, good flavor, not too spicy nor vinegary, you can taste the sesame oil. Still has a crunch. Kimchi Seaweed wasn’t as good as the cucumbers. It was pretty firm, long strands of Wakame. Pretty garlicky & a bit on the «ocean» side. It wasn’t too spicy either.
Spicy Beef Stew w/​thin egg noodles were good. Clear broth, had good flavor & depth. Meat was tender, blanched vegetable wasn’t over done. Served with preserved mustard greens on the side. The chicken basil soup w/​thin egg noddkes looked interesting. The chicken is served on the side. The Railroad is an interesting dish. Pork cutlet ontop of steam rice, corn, preserved radishes, veggies, & a Braised egg.