QYN Coffee

As much as we love coffee shops, matcha, and specifically Vietnamese coffee, we’ll be the first to admit that Orange County has become so oversaturated with similar options that we don’t feel the need to visit more of them any more – there are certainly enough. But when a new place like QYN Coffee opens and adds some actually interesting spins to the formula, we’re willing to stop in with an open mind… and are very glad that we did.

Located in the same plaza as one of our long-time favorite tea shops (Rooster), QYN Coffee replaced the Costa Mesa location of Vietnamese chain restaurant Nguyen’s Kitchen in a small plaza with notoriously limited parking. With seating for roughly a dozen people across chairs, small tables, and two long benches, QYN is primarily a grab-and-go cafe pairing over 50 drinks with a small collection of sweet pastries ($5.50 to $6.50) and a few savory alternatives ($6 to $8). On the food side, we sampled a very good peach and cream danish ($6), which was flaky outside, topped with a large, intact slice of fresh peach, and filled with custardy cream – texturally nice and delicately flavored.

QYN’s drinks span four primary categories: Vietnamese phin coffees and espressos ($4.50 to $7), matchas ($6.50 to $7.25), and hojichas ($6.25 to $6.75). While some of the options range from wholly to semi-familiar – salted cheese coffee, ube flan coffee, corn cream coffee, and Biscoff cookie drinks – peanut butter espresso, coconut hojicha crema, and blue spirulina-topped teas are available. Three additional “other sips” ($7) are all coconut water drinks paired with different flavors of cream toppings, and many drinks can be upgraded in size (+$1), extra matcha ($2 for two grams), or flan ($2.50).

We really enjoyed the QYN drinks we tried on our first and second visits. On the coffee side, a classic Vietnamese egg coffee ($7) combined super-strong phin dripped coffee and condensed milk with a egg foam top, delivering enough flavor from top to bottom that we didn’t even mind the non-trivial amount of ice inside the cup; each piece was coated in sweet egg foam, creating a light second drink as the ice melted. Equally powerful banana coffee ($6.75) paired banana milk, banana cream, and two slices of dried banana with more of the Vietnamese coffee, magically balancing the typically dominant coffee against an equal measure of fruit flavor.