My Gudetama Cafe Experience in California!
I totally missed out on themed cafes when I was in Japan, and funny enough, I checked out the Gudetama Cafe in Buena Park, CA a month or so after it opened. My friends and I heard horror stories re their grand opening, mostly along the lines of people waiting in line for many hours without getting in. I sure don’t have that patience, so if it’s more than an hour, I’m out.
The view from outside looks huge. It def looks much bigger from the outside than what you see on the inside. There was a line already when we went around 4 something PM on a Friday. We were a bit in front of the sign that states the wait is around an hour at that point. Ahh, theme park vibes!
We waited, but the wait wasn’t too bad. The exterior is super well themed with Gudetama and its colors all over. Can see it really well from semi afar!
As we got closer to the front, a worker came out and asked us how many are our parties so they can figure out seating logistics. Definitely easier to get seated for a table for 2 since there’s more of them. Some tables of 2 behind us got in before we did and before the tables of 5 and 6 in front of us.
We finally got in, and were shown our table. Pretty cool! Yellow with white stickers, totally Gudetama. So many Gudetama photo ops, whether with the various large figures or a Gudetama background. They even had the Gudetama show on Netflix playing.
There are no servers here. You go up front to place your order and then they call out your number. Self service pretty much.
We had Howlin Rays for lunch already so we weren’t terribly hungry, so we all shared some Sleepy Sliders, Gude Katsu Egg and Cheese, Sparkling Mango, and Passionfruit Yogurt Smoothie. We paid and got our number and took some more photos between there and our table into our number was called.
Drinks were ready first so they called our number for that first.
Our number for the food was then called so we picked that up.
We tried the sleepy slides first, and they were pretty good. Tiny, but good. Would get that again, but not for that wait time. The Katsu sandwich was alright. I def enjoyed the sliders more because of the crispy cheese. That was so good. The katsu sando itself was a bit dry. Def needing some sauce in there. The bun was nice and buttery tho.
We then checked out the small selection of merch as we finished our meal. If you don’t finish, you can ask for a lid and take your food to go.
Since we waited for quite a bit, we decided to get the Gudetama tote with the snacks. It says Gudetama cafe on it and tho it was cheap quality, it was cute.
Was it worth it? It was nice checking out, tho we expected more esp with the wait, the lack of service, prices, etc. def expected to see more exclusive merch, but maybe my expectations were just too high.
