Nobibi Ice Cream + Tea

Originally opened in Arcadia early in 2019, the first location of Nobibi Ice Cream + Tea rapidly developed a reputation for aesthetically interesting desserts that didn’t always live up to their potential in flavors or textures. But after relocating to Chino Hills in February 2020 – literally just before the pandemic started – the young business honed its initially shaky recipes and partnered with the team behind OneV Pho Bistro and Boban Boba & Banh Mi Cafe to franchise new stores. Now with over a dozen outposts, mostly in California with several in Mexico and Indonesia, Nobibi has opened three Orange County locations across Buena Park, Fullerton, and Santa Ana; as of April 2026, additional stores are “coming soon” to Anaheim, Cypress, Fountain Valley, and Huntington Beach. Seemingly independently operated, the locations don’t always have the exact same menus, but their core offerings are generally these: soft serve ice creams, egg waffles, colorful “signature drinks” without coffee or tea, and dalgona drinks with coffee, tea, sweetened milk, or cocoa at the base. We initially stopped by the Santa Ana store and found it closed for “repair and maintenance,” so instead visited the Fullerton location, which has mostly the same items at slightly higher prices.

As there are plenty of Dairy Queens around offering basic soft serve, Nobibi glams up its three flavors – milky vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio – with toppings, charcoal-chocolate cones, and/or cotton candy, more successfully riffing on the same ideas as the older South Korean chain Remicone. D’or ($13) is a basic cone with gold foil wrapped around its spiraling soft serve; s’mores ($7) adds toasted marshmallows and for some reason popcorn; fruity pebble ($7) is dusted with cereal. More interesting versions such as dream cloud ($13) include a large bed of cotton candy, Pocky sticks and an Oreo; mini cloud ($8.50) is a regular cone with corn flakes and strawberry sprinkles. Cotton candy wands ($4/$6), Hong Kong-style egg puff waffles ($6), and cups with ice cream and toppings ($7 to $11) are also available.

Drinks span categories including boba milk teas ($6), dalgona coffees ($6), fresh fruit teas ($6), fruit soda crushes ($6), fruit tea slushes with cheese foam ($6.50), and “milk frosty” blended milk/cheese foam/whipped cream drinks with fruit, matcha, ube, red beans, or cookies mixed in. There are also “in-house specials” ($6 to $8) supposedly only offered at the Buena Park and Santa Ana shops – Vietnamese coffees with ube or matcha, matcha lattes with banana or strawberry, and milk frosty versions with dalgona, biscoff, or pistachio.

We tried three items on our first visit, and liked each one of them. The first was one of Nobibi’s signature ice cream cones, Ninja ($7), which featured a jet black cone, nearly black soft serve with a dash of blue pop rocks, two chocolate Pocky sticks, and an Oreo cookie. In Nobibi’s early days, there were scattered complaints about its soft serve texture or flavor, but we found the chocolate ice cream to be very nice – not incredible in flavor, but a wonderful overall package with the cookies and cone, which used food-safe activated charcoal to achieve its dark coloration.