Sweet Mood

At a time when some plaza-based food businesses are too small (or cost-conscious) to accomodate tables or chairs, others feel like they’re either too large for their concepts or must be planning to grow into their spaces. After over a year in operation, Westminster’s Sweet Mood falls into the latter camp – it’s focused so exclusively on Vietnamese che desserts, French macarons, and basic cafe drinks that it’s not fully using its display cases, menu boards, and ample seating space, nor does it have the sort of multi-person staffing one might expect from its concept (see: Unu Cafe). On our visit, one person was taking orders, dispensing cookies, making drinks, and preparing che, all from a streamlined menu designed to make that all simple. 

Maybe too simple. The drinks menu has four choices: black coffee, Vietnamese iced coffee, milk tea with milk foam, and Thai tea with milk foam – that’s it, each $5, with the option to add one of three toppings (boba, green jelly, or grass jelly) for $1 more. There were five macarons when we visited, each priced at $2.75 to $3.00, and eight che options ($6.50 to $8) with either ice cold bases or hot peanut or black sesame soups, with additional jelly, boba, seed, fruit, paste, and bean add-ins at $1 each. Several additional “new” items, including a taro cloud milk tea, coconut-based che, and avocado che, were advertised near a tips jar on the counter.

Thankfully, what Sweet Mood serves is compelling enough to justify the limited selection. We went with one of the new items, “flan & jelly,” which combined a ice cream cup-sized portion of coconut milked coffee with flan and grass jelly cubes – a surprisingly fun dessert that straddled the line between a cafe-style drink and che, working the traditional Vietnamese pudding and jelly treat textures into a quaffable coffee base.