Drip Drip Cafe
In Westminster, come for the Vietnamese coffees and Japanese teas, stay for the fusion banh xeo tacos
In Orange County’s Little Saigon district, several restauranteurs have tested using a single space for two restaurant concepts – one at day, one at night – with generally successful results, most memorably including Kei Concepts’ use of the Gem Dining space to launch Nep Cafe (and briefly experiment with Kei Supper Club). March 2026 saw the launch of Drip Drip Cafe, a separately staffed spin off inside the Westminster Vietnamese restaurant and lounge Top. From 8:00am until 4:00pm each day, the decidedly nightclub-like space offers Vietnamese coffee, Japanese-style matcha, and a non-trivial brunch menu of Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American dishes; from 5:00pm until midnight, Top takes over with a comparatively gigantic Vietnamese dinner menu and a heavier focus on premium alcoholic beverages, neither of which we’ve yet sampled.
We can wholeheartedly recommend the drinks at Drip Drip Cafe, though. A list of Vietnamese phin-dripped, foam-topped coffee drinks ($6.50 to $7.25) ranges from fairly typical ca phe sua da to coconut taro, banana, and salted caramel versions, while matcha versions ($6.75 to $7.25) can be topped with everything from salted egg yolk or cheese to ube and double matcha + secondary tea foams. Better yet, coffee flights ($15) and matcha flights ($15.75) offer access to any four phin or matcha drinks you want to try together, and there are other latte coffee and non-caffeine milk drinks available in the same price range.
On the food side, a collection of recently added breakfast dishes includes mini baguettes (3/$12), croissants with eggs and ham ($12), and a basic salad ($3); most of the separate dual-sided, one-page menu focuses on fried appetizers ($11 to $18), large noodle soup bowls ($15 to $19), fried or claypot rice dishes ($18 to $20), and stir-fried options ($15 to $26). Lobster is available across multiple items, none particularly expensive, with beef, shrimp, and chicken featuring in others. Despite its name, Drip Drip Cafe is not a coffee shop where food is an afterthought; both the space and the tables full of plates make clear that it’s a place to sit down and eat, even though Top’s multi-page dinner menu (served by a different team, and not available during daylight hours) goes way beyond cafe fare.
On the drinks side, we used flights to sample four coffees – blossom, roasted sesame, egg brulee, and salted egg yolk – and enjoyed not only all of them, but also the fact that we were able to compare so many individually distinctive flavors at one time. The floral, almost sakura-like blossom couldn’t have been more different in flavor from the salted yolk coffee, even though both had similarly strong, thick foam toppings; the roasted sesame had a nice rather than overpowering intensity, and the egg brulee was sweet and creamy. Our matcha flight overlapped a little with egg brulee and roasted sesame topped teas, but also included Biscoff/Lotus (topped with a cookie) and double matcha + secondary tea versions, this one “jasmine matcha;” each had a legitimately great balance of green tea, creamy foam, and its promised foam flavor. Across all these drinks, Drip Drip Cafe went 8 for 8.
Food items were more of a mixed bag. We loved the Vietnamese savory pancake tacos with lobster ($18), three thin banh xeos that so resembled classic fried corn tacos visually that you’d never know the difference looking at them, but benefitted from fresh, abundant seafood and veggie fillings and a perfect level of crispiness. On the other hand, lobster garlic noodles ($26) combined oily, medium-thickness pasta with overcooked lobster chunks, peppers, and onions – nothing special – and a locally uncommon dish, pho ap chao bo (crispy fried pho with beef, $20) instead arrived with shrimp and small scallops, all in an overly thickened, not particularly tasty sauce with knife-cut slices from a clump of fried rice noodles.
In retrospect, we should have skipped both of the noodle dishes, but would go back for the coffee, tea, and Vietnamese tacos in a heartbeat. If we visit again, we’ll update this article with more details.
Stats
Price: $-$$
Service: Table
Open Since: March 2026
Address
15380 Beach Blvd. Suite A
Westminster, CA 92683
657.670.9889
Instagram: @drip_drip_cafe