Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii

The coffee ice cubes are the trick. Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii freezes coffee into the cubes so your iced drink doesn't water down across an hour in the Tustin sun, which sounds like a marketing line until you order a caramel koffee kooler and realize the last sip tastes like the first. That's the move here. That's why iced-coffee people drive past three other shops to get one.

This is the Tustin franchise of the Hawaiian chain, and a lot of the customers are people who first tried the brand on vacation. Nashville comes up. Various Hawaiian locations come up. The room leans into the theme: surf decor, Hawaiian palette, a large wall of branded merch that does real business. It's mellow, clean, and busy enough that the staff visibly hustles. Indoor and outdoor tables sized for individuals and pairs, not big groups, so if you're rolling in four-deep you might end up rearranging chairs.

Order the caramel koffee kooler, the bad ass mocha, or an iced latte built on those cubes. The koolers are the menu's identity, and they're what people remember from the brand's other locations. The blueberry lemon muffin is the pastry to grab. The island-inspired flavored lattes lean sweet, sometimes intensely so, so if you take your coffee black this is not your shop. Know that going in.

Parking is the catch. The lot is tight and tough to navigate, especially at peak. Plan to circle once or twice, or come at an off-hour and skip the hassle. The merch wall is its own draw, the kind of thing the brand's vacation-converted fans linger over before checking out with two shirts and a bag of beans.

For the chain's fans hunting down another location and for iced-coffee drinkers who want strong flavor that holds up, the formula works. For everyone else, the sweetness and the parking will tell you fast whether to come back. The Hawaiian theme reads convincing rather than themed, which is more than most island-branded cafes pull off in a Southern California strip mall.