SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA – You might think that the hottest new restaurant in Silicon Valley would be some kind of uber-fancy farm-to-table place, or perhaps a molecular gastronomy hub from a Michelin-stared chef.
But it’s not. The most exciting new spot to open up this summer – at least judging from the crowds that turned up to welcome it – is the Hello Kitty Café that opened last week in the Westfield Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara.
On opening day of the café, which celebrates the classic Hello Kitty character from Japanese company Sanrio, over 500 people reportedly lined up to be the first in the door.
I stopped by the location on a random Monday about a week after the opening and still found a line snaking out the door and down the halls of the popular Silicon Valley mall.
Sanrio and the Hello Kitty brand have a special place in my family’s heart. My late mother-in-law worked for Sanrio in the 1980s-1990s, and our house is still full of vintage Hello Kitty stuff from her time there.
When Hello Kitty held a pop-up café at Santana Row back in 2018, we were among the first people to check it out. The café featured delicious little sweets and teas, as well as tons of Hello Kitty merch.
That location now appears to have been intended to test the waters and explore the popularity of the Hello Kitty brand in Silicon Valley. The backers of the popup clearly liked what they saw, as the new Hello Kitty Café is much bigger and more permanent.
The new location occupies over 2,000 ft² on the second floor of the Westfield Valley Fair Mall, right by Eataly (more on that here) and Bloomingdale’s.
It includes a grab-and-go café, similar to the original pop-up, as well as the Bow Room, which serves seated afternoon tea featuring 10 items, priced at a ritzy $70 per person (even kids!).
I stopped by with my wife and two of my kids to try out the grab-and-go café. Again, at least 50 other people had the same idea, as there was a healthy line snaking out the door.
The good news is that the line moved quite quickly, and we only had to wait about 20 minutes to get in and place our order. The Hello Kitty Café is decked out in vibrant pink and black, and the iconic face of the Hello Kitty character is everywhere.
The sides of the store are set up to resemble the walls and exterior windows of a quaint little boutique, clearly intended for people to take Instagram photos in front of – indeed, I saw visitors ranging from a dad with his young daughter to several twenty-somethings posing and snapping selfies in front of the colorful walls.
The line snakes around into the opening of the café and passes by a window with a donut making robot inside. That provides something cool to look at and to whet your appetite as you wait.
You then pass by the display case filled with all the little sweet delicacies on offer at the Hello Kitty Café.
Hello Kitty, as my wife pointed out, is kind of like the Mickey Mouse of Japan – a ubiquitous and incredibly loved character that’s vastly culturally important domestically, and serves as cultural ambassador abroad.
The cuteness and fun of the character–and Japanese cultural concepts like kawaii–are reflected in the food options available at the Hello Kitty Café.
The menu centers around extremely sweet, colorful, and adorable pastries, cookies, and cakes.
One of the core offerings – which was also available at the original pop-up – is a birthday cake, sized for one person and decorated to look like a wrapped present.
Studded with colorful sprinkles and topped with a chocolate bow, the inside is delicious, and the whole thing practically begs to be posted to social media!
The Hello Kitty Café also features a strawberry cake, as well as seasonal options like a strawberry tart, which we also tried.
A new addition to the menu was the classic dairy-free soft-serve Dole Whip.
Typically, you can only get this in Hawaii or Disneyland, so it was an unexpected treat to find it at the Hello Kitty Café. They serve it in a heaping tower topped with a cute Hello Kitty bow, which dwarfs a tiny cup with Hello Kitty’s face on it.
I like that they took a treat most Californians will be familiar with and turned it into something uniquely cute and fun to eat – but otherwise, it tastes exactly like the Dole Whip many Californians have come to love when traveling to the Hawaiian Islands, which I was pleased to see.
The cakes and tarts seem intended to eat at the Hello Kitty Café, but the café also offers a variety of items that seem more made to take away and enjoy later.
These include sugar cookies decorated with the character’s face, as well as an extremely cute box of colorful macarons featuring Hello Kitty bowties.
Hello Kitty Café threw in a box of macarons and an ice cream with my order – thanks guys!
For beverages, the café includes several types of tea, as well as the perennially popular matcha drinks that have been appearing all over the Bay Area over the last few years.
I got a strawberry tea. I appreciated that it was a bit less sweet than a typical tea in the Bay Area, which meant it paired better with the extremely sweet desserts we tried.
One thing I was sad about is that the Hello Kitty Café no longer seems to feature the rose tea that they had in the pop-up. That was one of my favorite teas I’ve ever tried, so I really hope they bring it back or include it as a seasonal item!
Rounding out the menu are a variety of flavored donuts. The donut robot seemed to be out of commission when we visited, so I didn’t try these out.
Unless you’re staying for the seated Bow Room experience, Hello Kitty Café is a grab-and-go format. There are several tables nearby where you can eat your items.
One piece of feedback I’d provide is that it would be great to have plates and more utensils! The café only provided the boxes that their sweets came in, and spoons–lots of spoons. For those choosing to eat immediately after buying items, more cutlery and serving ware would be really helpful.
Despite that small gripe, the items we got were delicious. Again, expect aggressively sweet cakes and delicious, more powerful tea to balance them out.
The birthday cake and strawberry cake had flavorful buttercream and colorful, fresh cake inside.
The Dole Whip was my favorite item – sweet and refreshing without the heaviness of a giant scoop of dairy soft serve.
The macaron made a great item to take home. Each one is uniquely flavored, with flavors like strawberry, pistachio, and more. Like the cakes, they’re intensely sweet and strongly reflect their specific flavors, which can be a rarity in macarons.
We didn’t buy any Hello Kitty merch – again, we have plenty of awesome vintage Sanrio stuff – but the café featured everything from water bottles to lunchboxes and seems to have seasonal items that rotate through as well.
Overall, Hello Kitty Café is a super fun, nostalgic addition to the Silicon Valley food scene. With a reputation and emotional connection as strong as the one many people have with Hello Kitty, the café could easily have phoned it in when it comes to the actual food.
But they haven’t. The pastries are delicious, and just like many of the items at Disneyland perfectly reflect the brand and the characters of that American icon, the adorable, colorful, childlike sweets feel like they’re a perfect reflection of Sanrio and Hello Kitty.
We’ll definitely be back for more tea and sweets. Next time, perhaps we’ll even work up the courage (and budget!) to try the 10-item seated experience!
Hello Kitty Cafe: 2855 Stevens Creek Blvd ste 2280, Santa Clara, CA 95050. Website here.
