There have been so many new ice cream shops that popped up this summer and one of my favorites is Matcha Love. Located inside Mitsuwa, the soft serve ice cream is rich and luxurious and comes in hard-to-find Asian flavors of matcha, black sesame and hoji-cha. You can also get a variety of shakes and lattes.
Matcha and Hoji-cha
On one recent visit, I chose matcha and hoji-cha. The hoji-cha is a roasted tea. I found the sprinkling of tea powder a tad too bitter. A lot of my friends really love this flavor so maybe this was just an off day. I’ll have to try again at some other point. I really love the matcha flavor though and this is the only place I’ve ever seen matcha soft serve ice cream served.
Triple Ice Waffle Bowl
The triple ice waffle bowl gives you mini servings of matcha, black sesame and vanilla. Unfortunately, they do not allow you to substitute out the vanilla for hoji-cha, which is quite disappointing because while I like vanilla, I would rather try a more unique flavor. Interestingly, vanilla is not offered on its own–only in the combination waffle bowl.
The vanilla is actually vanilla bean and you can see specks of vanilla bean throughout. However, the ice cream was extremely grainy. I’m not quite where they went wrong since they do such a superb job with the other flavors, but we really didn’t like this one. Of the three, my favorite remained the matcha. I wish they would turn the sweetness of the black sesame down a notch.
Overall, we like stopping in here for ice cream. It’s the only place in San Diego that offers such unique Japanese soft serve flavors and they don’t skimp on the ingredients. The ice cream is very rich, unlike some soft serve places which use a cheaper cream base that causes the soft serves to be watery and runny. They also use high quality matcha powder for the matcha flavored ice cream.
You can read about my first visit here.
Matcha Love
(inside Mitsuwa Marketplace)
4240 Kearny Mesa Rd.
San Diego, CA 92111
I keep reading matcha everywhere! I’m gonna get the waffle bowl this week if I can find some time out of the labs! (so busy lately)
it’s really good!
I still haven’t gone here yet. I’d love to try the black sesame flavor! The waffle bowl with three flavors looks good too but two flavors would be wasted since I really only like the black sesame. Looks pretty though!
you should definitely go! i like the flavor of the black sesame but i find it super sweet, which is why I don’t like that one as much
Hi! I am Mariana from Argentina, i just want to tell you i’ve just made the mooncakes that you posted last year, thank you so much for the recipe, i’ve been wanting so long for the mold and i was so scared that the recipe were too dificult, but it was very easy, i toasted the flour and everything, and the result is great! I will do it a lot of times!! Thank you, and sory for my bad english !
that’s so great!
Been stopping at Matcha Love every weekend! Hoji-cha is my personal favorite, but I’ve enjoyed all the flavors. The Costa Mesa location’s soft serve has been consistently smooth and creamy, but the serving I tried at the San Diego location last weekend was a bit grainy. I’m curious to see what happens to that space now that the Mitsuwa bookstore is closing.
Interesting. I’ve been wanting to try the Costa mesa one and see how it compares. i haven’t had a bad experience so far at SD, except for the vanilla bean. i’m really curious about what they are going to do with the bookstore space too
Yum I want to try the hoji-cha. I love trying weird ice cream flavors, the Asian ones can sound a bit odd if you’re not used to them (corn, red bean…) but I’ve like every single one I’ve tried so far 🙂
me too. I love trying all the exotic flavors. =)