K Tea Cafe, Sunnyvale

I had my first ever Jianbing at Joe's Steam Rice Roll in New York, and found it fascinating.  When I returned to the Bay Area, I decided to seek it out.

My destination? K Tea Cafe.

"We are a locally owned family-friendly cafe. Our menu features milk teas, hot tea lattes, infused teas, and more! All of our tea and coffee drinks are made to order and freshly brewed in front of our customers. We proudly does not use any powders or high fructose corn syrup in our personally made drinks.

We also serve a variety of street foods including our specialty Jianbing - a traditional Chinese savory crepe cooked to perfection! Other items on our menu include crispy chicken, takoyaki, bento boxes and other street foods!"

I was additionally drawn in of course by the promise of milk teas (including those with cheese foam!), and fun things like takoyaki.

K Tea Feast.

Our group shared several dishes, so I was able to sample a range from the menu.

Setting

Store Front.

My quest lead me to K Tea Cafe, located in downtown Sunnyvale, the perfect destination when I had some co-workers in town for a conference.

Prep Area.

K Tea is a casual setup, order at a register, and your order is called out when ready.  Most of the food prep happens right behind the counter.

Crepe Station!

Just like Joe's Steam Rice Noodle, the jianbing making station was front and center, and I loved watching them being made.

Condiments.

I appreciated the DIY condiment station, with all the tasty sauces.

Cuisine

Main Menu.

The menu at K Tea Cafe is ... extensive.  And hard to define.  It is Korean.  Japanese.  Chinese.  Vietnamese.  Um, #allTheAsian.  But, with a bit of American pub food sprinkled in too?  But not really fusion.  So. Many. Choices.

One of my guests lauded K Tea in just owning up to the fact that they serve dishes from a slew of different cultures, and just pick the best of every one.   They don't try to be authentic to one region or another.

Still, it really was amusing, and slightly overwhelming, to have a menu to pick from for our main dish that ranged from Vietnamese bahn mi, to Chinese jianbing, to Korean rice bowls, to fusion bao ... with street foods from around the world as snacks.

And that doesn't even get into the beverage lineup, a full array of milk tea, fruit tea, coffee drinks, and more toppings than even places that specialize in *just* the drinks.  And ... new Hong Kong desserts were just added, although their waffle machine was broken.

Kinda something for everyone here, with many protein options, beef, pork belly, chicken, and tofu too.  The only thing I didn't see represented was seafood, besides octopus in one dish.  Oh, and, uh, anything vaguely healthy or vegetable focused.  Very, very few vegetables on the menu, only used as garnish.  Not much freshness here.

Noodle Menu.

Another menu board listed out all the options for building your own stir fry noodle dish, again with a range of options, and I don't just mean the type of noodle (egg, rice,whole wheat), or the protein (chicken, tofu, pork belly, beef), or the toppings (too many to list out here).  No, I mean, spanning ... all the cuisines.  The sauce choices were named like "Malaysia", which featured a sweet soy sauce, "Saigon" for garlic and black pepper, "Seoul" for gochujiang, etc, etc.  Tokyo, szechuan, bangkok were all options too.

So many choices.

Street Food

The street food menu had a slew of things we wanted to try, but since we weren't that hungry, we settled on only 3: sweet potato fries, because they were what I wanted the most, takoyaki because most people had never had them, and one of the fried crispy chicken options, so there was enough protein in the meal.  Yes, here we had an American item, a Japanese items, and a Korean one.

That meant we had to look past the garlic fries (good, but less delicious to me than sweet potato fries), and the corn nuggets (which I totally would have ordered if the topic of takoyaki hadn't come up), and the more standard items like potstickers or spring rolls.

The street food items all came served in cardboard boxes, even though we were dining in, with little skewers with which to stab and eat them, true street food style. 

All were served in generous portions, so big that even though we got 3 sides and 2 mains for 4 people, we had far too much extra food.  I gladly saved all the leftover sweet potato fries, and enjoyed them a day later (they crisped up perfectly in the toaster oven), and my companion really enjoyed the leftover crispy chicken, but we easily could have ordered just 1 side, or 1 fewer entree.

Original Crispy Chicken. $6.75.

For the chicken (e.g. responsible protein), we could pick from "original", lemon pepper, garlic, or spicy.

Since it was our first time, we went for the original to try the basic version.

It was ... fine.  It was indeed crispy, but the coating was not really a style I like.  Seemed to be mostly dark, a bit tough, chicken.

I did like the whole cloves of garlic that were mixed in, although, we did wonder why we had those, given that ordered the original, not garlic, version.  Was the garlic one ... more garlic?

One diner liked this, particularly when dipped in sweet chili sauce from the condiments table.

Takoyaki. $6.75.

The takoyaki we ordered a bit on a whim, mostly because in discussing the menu we realized the others were not familiar with takoyaki.  

Neither myself, nor the other guest who was familiar, had any particular great experiences with takoyaki before though, so we didn't particularly expect it to be good.  We went to what is supposed to be some of the best in Tokyo, Gindaco High Ball Sakaba, and, as you may recall, we were not impressed.  The best I have ever had was still just at a random catered reception in Tokyo.

This however, was definitely good.  Served hot and fresh, so hot of course that it burnt the mouth of the person who dove in right away.

The texture of the balls was really what was spectacular, crispy on the very exterior, but soft and slightly chewy and almost even mochi-like inside.  I really enjoyed the texture of the balls.  The bits of octopus inside were a bit chewy, as it fairly common I think.

On top, a decent coating of sweeter takoyaki sauce and a drizzle of spicy mayo.  I of course loved the sauces.

I was pretty surprised by how good these were, and the other person who was familiar with takoyaki agreed it was better than he'd had in Tokyo too.  The others weren't as impressed, lamenting the chewy octopus.  I'm glad we tried these, and I'd get them again.

Sweet Potato Fries. $5.75.

I'm not going to lie.  I partially picked K Tea Cafe because I was really craving sweet potato fries, and I had read that they had good ones.

And ... well, they did.  Even the person who said he wasn't into sweet potato fries, and doesn't normally like them, was pleased with these, and he ate far more than anticipated.  He praised them even.

Like everything, they were quite hot and fresh, and super crispy.  I loved the good sweet potato flavor, the assorted sizes and shapes, and they even almost seemed battered, just slightly.

Very, very good sweet potato fries, but I found myself really needing a sauce.  Well, I always am all about sauces, but for these, I really wanted something to dip them in, and the spicy sauces, or even the banana ketchup or sweet chili, just weren't doing it for me.

At some point, I discovered that I could dip them into the sauces in with the takoyaki, and kinda loved them that way.  The sweet sauce and creamy mayo ... a good combo with the sweet potato fries.

Side of Spicy Mayo.

So ... I went up and asked for a side of the spicy mayo of course!

It greatly, greatly improved my already good experience of eating the sweet potato fries.  The mix with the sweet takoyaki definitely worked too, in a different way, but I found mixing it with the spicy chili was even better, just more of a rare flavor combination.

Jianbing

The main reason we were at K Tea Cafe however, was to try the jianbing, a dish I had only discovered a few weeks prior in New York, at Joe's Rice Noodle Rolls, in the Canal Street Market.   I found it really unique, tasty, and something I wanted to try more of.  It also happens to be the signature dish of K Tea Cafe.

If you are unfamiliar, jianbing is a savory crepe, usually eaten as breakfast in China, sold as street food.  They come with different fillings and sauces, but usually have baocui (crispy fried crackers), some kind of protein, scallions, and a chili or hoisin sauce inside.  They are folded and served to be eaten with the hands.

All jianbing come with egg, crispy fried wonton, green onion, cilantro, black sesame, and spicy and sweet black bean sauce.  From there, you can pick your protein (chicken teriyaki, bulgogi beef, pork belly, tofu, or, classic, with nothing else added).  From there, you can add chili oil, lettuce, dried pork, and preserved mustard for free, and cheese or ham for $1.50 more.

We ordered two to split between the 4 of us, as we were ordering other things, and, because we had been eating all day at our conference, and weren't that hungry.  It turned out to be plenty, as these are quite sizable items.  Both were made fresh to order, and well timed to be ready at the same time as our other foods.  They cook quickly.

Classic Jianbing. $8.75. All free toppings.

"Chinese Savory Crepe with egg, crispy fried wonton, green onion, cilantro and black sesame. Topped with garlic chile and sweet bean sauce!"

For the first jianbing, I wanted to just go classic, mostly because none of the fillings actually called out to me.  I was sad that they didn't have crab or sausage as options, like Joe's had.  We opted for all the free add-ons (pork floss, preserved mustard, chili oil, lettuce). 

The crepe style was a bit different from what I had at Joe's, in that it came as one large (VERY large) crepe.  I think it would have been quite hard to eat this way, and suddenly appreciated that Joe's had cut it into two chunks, and that Joe's had rolled it differently, more folds, but far more portable and easy to eat.  Since we were splitting it though, we had to cut it up anyway, so that didn't matter.

The crepe base was good, I liked how well distributed the green onions and sesame seeds were, and it wasn't too eggy (always a concern for me).  I did wish it was a bit crispier though.  It was brushed lightly inside with the sauce, but it was quite lost, even with few fillings.  I'm not sure why they menu said it would come topped with sauce, as, it didn't.  The pork floss, lettuce, and mustard though I didn't taste at all, and I really wanted to, as they were the parts that sounded flavorful and interesting.  I did like the generous portion of crispy wonton.

Overall though, it was quite boring.  Just, not as flavorful nor interesting as what I had in New York.

At Joe's though, part of what made the jianbing was the sauces.  Oh the sauces.  I adored that peanut sauce, and the other mixes I came up with.  K Tea however didn't have nearly as exciting of sauces.  Soy sauce, sweet chili, a little spicy chili ... it worked, it added something, but it certainly didn't leave me wanting more. 

I ended up using the extra spicy mayo I had added on for the sweet potato fries, and I liked that, but, it wasn't quite appropriate. 

I wouldn't get this again, and the others felt it was interesting to try, but weren't really thrilled either.

Bulgogi Beef Jianbing. $10.75. All free toppings + cheese ($1).

For the second jianbing, they picked bulgogi beef, and we decided to add cheese to this one too.

I didn't try it, as I was far too happy with just feasting on sweet potato fries and takoyaki, but they said it was more flavorful.

Black Sesame Latte, Iced, Soy, No Sweet
with Egg Pudding, Aloe Vera, Lychee Popping Boba,
Krema (on the side).

For my beverage, er, dessert, I went for a black sesame latte, but, customized it heavily.  They had sooo many choices for me to make.

This was a very random choice for me, not one I had pre-planned.  But I realized I didn't want just another standard bubble tea, and when I saw black sesame as an option for a latte, I decided to just turn it into a bubble tea, basically.

The latte is available iced or hot, I went for iced, as it was hot out.  Milk choices were extensive: almond, cream, organic milk, soy, or oat.  Given my love of soy milk, that was an easy option, and it was nice they didn't charge extra for it (only for oat milk).

Sweetness options of regular (100%), less (60%), extra lite (30%), or No Sweet (0%).  I went for No Sweet, since I often find that even the lightest sweet option results in a very sweet drink, particularly when I add all the mix-ins. 

I wanted many many mix-ins, and the person taking my order told me that if I got more than two (I had selected 5), it really winds up as a cup of mix-ins, and not a beverage.  I assured him this was fine, but reduced my order to only 3 mix-ins (egg pudding, lychee popping boba, aloe vera), and ... krema, but on the side, so I could use it as I pleased.

The base of this turned out to be ... well, not sweet.  My fears of an overly sweet creation were unfounded, as they seemed to really just use black sesame that ... wasn't a crazy sweet powder to start.  So often you start with a sweet powder, then they add additional sweet, so, this started out actually not sweet.  And the soy milk used seemed unsweetened too. 

It was an interesting base, the black sesame didn't really dissolve, again, they seemed to use real black sesame, and for a cold drink, this resulted in lots of bits of ground up black sesame seeds throughout.  It had a light sesame flavor, and I liked the black sesame with the soy milk, but if you were expecting a sweet, powder based, very strong black sesame flavor, this certainly was not it.  One of my companions tried a sip and was like "that is not sweet enough for me!".

I thought it was nice to sip on alongside my spicier food, but it didn't meet my dessert needs either, and I ended up going out for cheesecake instead, and mostly saving this for later.  I may or may not have repurposed the soy sesame milk for my granola the next morning, with some of the mix-ins too, and really, really enjoyed it.  I need to use bubble tea milk for cereal more often!

I really liked their version of krema.  Fluffy in the right way, savory, and quite salty.  I was glad to have it on the side, so I could use it on other things.  Definitely one of the highlights of the meal.

Mix-Ins: Egg Pudding, Aloe Vera, Lychee Popping Boba.

Now, for the rest of the mix-ins.

I had many, many choices, including 7 types of boba (honey, brown sugar, mango bursting, strawberry bursting, passion fruit bursting, lychee bursting, crystal), 4 types of jellies (coffee, rainbow, lychee, grass), puddings, red or mung beans, aloe vera, and more.

Narrowing down to just 3 was hard, but I decided on egg pudding (in case I wanted to extract it as a dessert), lychee bursting boba (for sweetness and complimentary flavor), and aloe vera, my recent new discovery that I like to add.  It was hard to pass up the jellies and more of their house made boba though.

The pudding was very average, clearly from a can, big chunks.  It had ... virtually no flavor, even when I singled it out and just ate it alone, and thus provided little other than texture (it was firm and slimy, in a good way, but the taste was non-existent).  I'd skip this in the future.

The aloe vera was fine, I appreciate having that more crispy texture compared to boba, and it was refreshing.  Fairly standard.

The lychee popping boba were my favorite mix-in, quite sweet, nice bursts of juiciness.  But, much like the pudding, these clearly weren't made in house, or anything special, just, generic from a supplier mass produced juicy boba.

My mix-ins were fine, but, I think in the future I'd likely go for the honey or crystal boba, since they seem to make those in-house, and probably the rainbow or lychee jellies, since I do tend to love those.