Café 86

Across Orange County, countless drink and dessert shops now cater to fans of boba teas, coffee, and pastries, and the vast majority overlap significantly in flavors. Café 86 is a somewhat different story: Founded in Chino Hills back in 2014, this now 25-location chain remixes common recipes with Filipino influences, leaning heavily on purple yams – ube – across its sweets. As of mid-2026, Café 86’s only Orange County location is at The District at Tustin Legacy, but Anaheim and Fullerton locations are among many listed as “coming soon” on the company’s website; most of its other locations are in Southern California and Nevada.

In Tustin, Café 86 offers around 20 indoor seats immediately next to a significant area devoted to a prep space and tablet-based ordering counter, with self-serve plastic silverware and ice water immediately next to a space where completed items are handed off to waiting customers. Next to two cloches containing ube cookies and brownies, a front-of-store display case shows off ube cakes, pop tarts, and golf ball-sized “truffles,” as well as items made with Filipino ingredients including turon (banana/jackfruit), Milo malt chocolate powder, and coconut/fruit halo halo. Menu boards flag iced teas ($6) made with the popular Filipino citrus fruit calamansi, milk teas ($6) with rose syrup, milkshakes ($9.50 to $10.50) containing ube, matcha, or Oreo cookies, and “espresso bar” drinks ($6.50) with Nutella, pandan, and ube – plus more conventional ingredients, and the option to add lychees, boba, aloe, or flan egg pudding for $1.25. Halo halo desserts ($10.50 to $11.50), mochi dough and ice cream “churrochis,” ($6.50-$8.50), and a few American-style sandwiches ($10.25 to $11.50) are also available.

We tried as many Café 86 items as we could handle after a nearby dinner, and came away mostly satisfied. Our favorite item of the bunch was an ube truffle ($5.45), which initially looked like a mud-covered golf ball, but revealed a beautiful purple ube core after the first bite – just soft and sweet enough inside to offset its dry, grainy chocolate exterior. A milder hit was the ube crinkle ($4.50), a purple yam-colored, powdered sugar-topped cookie that reminded us of slightly better versions once served at Black Pearl Tea House; this one was good while it lasted, but on the small side, and not really memorable.