Up 2 You Cafe
Up 2 You (or “Up Yours” as DH likes to call it because from far away the sign looks like it says “Up You”) is a fairly new dessert cafe located in the Convoy area, behind BBQ Chicken.
I didn’t actually know it even existed until reading Erin’s article for Serious Eats.
The cafe has a charming interior, with plushy chairs and mismatched decor which fits the theme of “it’s all up to you.” For example, each section of the walls has completely different styles of decoration.
The cafe offers three dessert options: crepes, snow ice and honey toast. For each one, there is a base price for the item, and then you can also choose to add fruits/toppings for an additional 50 cents each, and/or ice cream for an additional 50 cents. They also offer a variety of pearl tea drinks and coffee.
Milk “Snow Ice” with Mangoes
My main objective for coming here was to try the “snow ice.” I wanted to see if it was like the Taiwanese style snow ice I’ve been obsessed with and blogged about many times from all the places I’ve visited in LA and Taiwan that serve it.
Taiwanese snow/snowflak ice, as you recall from my old posts, has ice that is made with water and condensed milk. As a result of the condensed milk, the ice is much creamier than old school shaved ice and melts slower too. It is shaved through a special machine, which shaves the ice into thin ribbon-like sheets, creating light and fluffy layers when made correctly.
It seemed like they were indeed trying to make the snow ice, but didn’t quite get it right. I wonder if maybe they didn’t have the right equipment. I could taste the condensed milk in the ice and it was softer then shaved regular ice, but it was still icier than most of the snow ices I’ve had and also instead of falling in sheets, the ice was in tiny pieces.
The result was something in between regular shaved ice and Taiwanese snow ice. If I had never had snow ice before, I might have enjoyed this more. But having had some great snow ice, I found this to be disappointing.
Honey toast with pandan
I love brick toast and always order it when I see it at tea places. One of the topping options for the honey toast is pandan, which I’ve never seen offered, so I decided to try it. The pandan sauce is actually served on the side.
I thought the toast here was too buttery. It was sweet on top from the honey, but the inside of the toast was soaked in butter and I don’t like a lot of butter on my toast. My favorite brick toast is still the one served at Tea Station.
Taro smoothie, Milk tea with honey boba, and white mocha.
We only planned on getting one drink each, but they are currently running a special where if you buy two drinks you get a third free. I loved the jar that the taro one was served in. The honey boba was a little disappointing. It was really sweet but the boba texture wasn’t that chewy. My favorite honey boba is from Half & Half in LA.
I had mixed feelings about this place. The decor is very cute and the desserts and drinks were fairly reasonably priced. The food was just so-so, but then so are most of the dessert spots of this sort in this area.
7770 Vickers St
Ste 101
San Diego, CA 92111
(619) 663-6388
i came here once and it took me and my friends 30+ minutes each to get honey toast and 2 crepes. we all ordered after one another, but none of us ate at the same time. left a bad taste in my mouth, not sure if i’m willing to come again anytime soon especially since the food isn’t all that great anyways.
Oh that’s too bad. It didn’t take us too long to get our food, but then it also wasn’t very busy because we went in the afternoon. They only had two people working though so I can imagine it might have taken awhile if their had been a lot of orders. The food is just so-so. I wouldn’t mind hanging out here with some friends on a slow afternoon because it does have a cute decor, but nothing stood out food-wise.
I like your DH’s sense of humor! 😀
How exciting to see a place that serves that type of snow ice (with condensed milk)! i really like that type of texture of the ice.
I’ve never had brick toast before; it looks like something that I’d try…
Oh you should definitely try brick toast! They offer it at a lot of Tapioca tea places like Tea Station, Tea Garden. My favorite is at Tea Station. I’m glad the snow ice has finally hit San Diego. Now I’m just hoping someone makes a decent version
Yeah I visited that place and thought it was ok. The ppl working there are great. But the location isn’t ideal and the crepe I had could have been better.
I did try the snow ice at Liangs thou. We had the green tea one and it tasted ‘meh’. A bit bitter and not sweet at all ( I guess the must use real matcha green tea powder?). Have you tried their snow ice ?
Yup! Post is coming soon. It was very disappointing. The black sesame was okay but the original milky one was so icy that it barely resembled snow ice. Liang’s is probably the worst version I’ve had. For now I think I’ll stick to driving to 302 in Irvine.
I didn’t know about this place until I read it on Erin’s blog, either. I’ve been meaning to try out BBQ Chicken, too. Sounds like I can kill two birds (chickens?) with one stone.
Hehe. I was actually thinking of doing that too–trying them both at once, but I had already meal plans with friends at other places, so ended up just going here solo.
I didn’t realize there were any eating places behind BBQ Chicken – there was some remodelling recently but I guess I didn’t look very carefully. I can’t help but wonder their logo designer is the same one who did Swab, I mean Shabu, World!
Lol! I was totally thinking about
SwabShabu world when I saw this sign. Yeah, it’s sort of hidden. There’s this separate plaza behind BBQ Chicken with very little parking that has a foot massage place and a few other places. We actually parked at BBQ chicken because the lot for that plaza only has about 4 spaces.Ha-ha-ha….can’t get DH’s riff of the name of my head while reading this!
Hehe. It’s bad because now I keep thinking that’s what it’s called.