Korean Plaza Market Lotus paste pastries : These baked goods from Koreans Plaza Market have a buttery, soft exterior similar to moon cakes and a generous amount of white lotus paste inside. The filling has a starchy consistency, almost like biting into a softened Japanese sweet potato. Miniature size makes them good for snacking. 3.0/5.0
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Purple Kow Roasted Oolong milk tea with boba: Originally from San Francisco, Purple Kow is a bubble tea shop that also has a location in downtown Berkeley directly adjacent to Top Dog. It serves its drinks in distinctly short and stout containers that are more like buckets than cups. Many of their milk teas are made using organic milk products. I ordered my roasted oolong milk tea with soymilk and 20% sugar and ice. The drink was very mild, tasting mostly of faintly sweetened milk and less so of tea. Their boba are miniature compar... (read more) 3.0/5.0
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Blockheads Black sesame shaved ice with red bean, rice cakes, almond jelly, and condensed milk: Finally got to try this LA-based Taiwanese shaved ice chain. The black sesame ice cream had decent flavor but the texture was not as fluffy as I knew it could be given my recent experience at Powder in San Francisco. At Blockheads, they make their rice cakes in house, which are essentially tang yuan (the mochi-like glutinous rice dumplings that often accompany red bean soup). I expected their almond jelly to be almond jello, but it was more like the harder gelatin cubes often used in Asia... (read more) 3.0/5.0
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Kekou Gelato House Soursop and osmanthus plum berry sorbets: Specializing in Asian flavors ranging from milk tea to peanut sesame, Kekou is a Toronto-based ice cream shop with a strong anti-stabilizer philosophy. This means all of their gelato and sorbets are not made with any additives or stabilizers to maintain their consistency. As a result, their sorbets are not entirely smooth, with some small ice chunks throughout. Their gigantic scoops are generous, and the mildly flavored sorbets I ordered were fresh though a tad too sweet. I enjoyed the tropi... (read more) 3.0/5.0
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Smile More Sparkling Lychee Spritzer : I’ve seen an upwards trend for vinegar-based sodas in the past year, and this Asian lychee-flavored one is sour and lightly sweetened with a faint lychee aftertaste. It’s not a drink I would want to consume in one serving though the bottle is smaller than most. If you appreciate carbonated beverages that aren’t sweet, you may enjoy it. 3.0/5.0
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Regent Pandan Cake: A half-sphere mini cake, baked-brown on the outside and shamrock-green on the inside. Has a light texture that eats a bit dry. Often paired with coconut, pandan leaves are popular in southeast asian cuisines like Thai and Indonesian; the flavor of this pandan cake fell somewhere in between rich coconut and light lemongrass. Fragrant and not too sweet, but the texture could have been more moist. 3.0/5.0
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