Tram Cream Coffee
How much ice is too much ice? This small chain's Garden Grove shop goes way past the line
There aren’t many places in this guide that have left us internally divided, but Tram Cream Coffee is one of them. Opened in San Jose back in 2022, the small chain’s third location opened in 2024 in Orange County under the name Tram 3 Cream Coffee. We all generally liked the look of the Garden Grove restaurant, which like Phuc Long Coffee & Tea evokes hand-painted signs, wooden furniture, and antique items to create an old school Vietnamese vibe. But after several visits worth of up and down experiences with the drinks, we finally reached a consensus.
Tram offers a robust menu of Vietnamese-style coffees and teas that are appealing: egg foam and cream foam toppings, various jellies, and bobas, as well as fruit-flavored teas. Photographed nicely for a touchscreen digital ordering system, the cups arrive looking legitimately pretty great and superficially worthy of their $6-8 asking prices.
There are also a handful of rice paper-focused snack items, which include banh trang tron rice paper salad and a number of bagged pre-flavored variants; pre-wrapped rice paper rolls are also available. We’ve ordered the salad twice, and it’s good – nothing special by comparison with other local places that sell it (such as An Vat OC), but solid.
The problem with the drinks is that easily 70% of their volume comes from large ice cubes. A so-called “VIP” coffee ($8) with two different types of cream, coffee, and coffee jellies arrived looking mostly like Tram’s official photos; we were instructed to mix it ourselves for the appropriate flavor effect, which seemed sort of odd given the way the ingredients were presented. There was so much ice in the cup that properly mixing everything was impossible, leading to what turned out to be two big sips of coffee at the bottom, and a cup full of creamy ice mixed with jellies above it: this was the opposite of a VIP experience. Other drinks we’ve ordered have almost univerally had similar ice imbalance issues, and there isn’t a “light ice” ordering option – it’s either all or nothing.
We get that coming here is supposed to be an “experience,” and there’s even a room devoted to tiny stools and old Vietnamese decor so people can take photos as if they’re in Vietnam. But each time we have visited, we’ve walked out feeling like the value just wasn’t there on the drinks, even when we liked how they briefly tasted. After several tries, we’ve decided won’t be going back.
Stats
Price: $-$$
Service: Counter
Open Since: 2022, 2024 (OC)
Addresses
9520 Garden Grove Blvd. Unit 1
Garden Grove, CA 92844
714.583.8644
Instagram: @tramcreamcoffee