Bubble Egg Austin Review

We were super excited to try out bubble waffles from Bubble Egg. Although a lot of other boba places also sell bubble waffles I was especially interested in trying it from Bubble Egg.  They claim to use the original Hong Hong recipe for egg waffles so I was hoping for a more authentic experience. A bubble waffle is a exactly what it sounds like, a special egg waffle made in a bubble shaped iron. Like any other waffle they can be both sweet or savory and can be customized with a variety fillings and toppings.

Photo from Bubble Egg website

Since we were in the area we tried the Austin location which is right by the University of Texas campus. That obviously means you need to figure out paid street parking if you go Monday through Saturday. We went on a Sunday so street parking was free. 

When we walked in, there were only a few people ahead of us but it took a really long time before it was our turn to order. I noticed that they only had 3 waffle irons so I decided to only order 3 waffles to speed things up. By the time I got to the front though, I realized that only two waffle irons were actually working. So that was a big part of why everything was so slow. Although they have boba and other items on the menu, most people coming in were ordering waffles so its seemed strange that they would only have two working waffle irons. They also only had two people on that shift.

When it was finally our turn, I ordered two original base waffles with vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries but I was told they had run out of vanilla ice cream. That seemed bizarre to me. They don't make their own icecream, instead they have signs on the wall that they use hershey icecream so it was odd that they couldn't keep a basic vanilla in stock. They were also out of many other regular icecream flavors on their menu, so I chose the llamalicious flavor which wasn't even on the menu.

My husband wanted to try the organic matcha waffle but surprise surprise they were out of that. He went with the original waffle with peanut filling, mango sorbet topping and bananas. 

We waited a really long time after placing our order because they were still making orders for the people ahead of us. While we waited I couldn't help noticing how extremely messy the waffle irons were. I understand they have to really fill the iron to get the bubble shape but the amount of batter that drips out is crazy and then the fact that they just leave it there to build up like that was really off-putting

Our orders came out one by one so by the time we had the 3rd waffle the first was getting very soggy. There was a pink whipped topping added to all three waffles that I really couldn't understand because we hadn't asked for anything whipped. It had an extremely strong artificial mint flavor and it overpowered all the other flavors. So all we could taste and smell was mint.  Based on how long it took to make, I didn't want to ask for the orders to be remade so we left.

I went back to their website to look at their menu to figure out what the pink whip was but didn't see anything like that on the menu.

The waffle itself has a nice chewy texture to it and I believe would be really nice without that pink mint whip. They give very little of the fresh fruit toppings compared to the photos, and also very little icecream and use that pink whip to fill it up.  Each waffle with ice cream and topping works out to be about $8 before tax and tip and just doesn't seem worth it for what we got.

My nine year old is a budding food critic and loves rating food places. She rated this place 5/10 and I thought that was pretty generous all things considered.  The overall experience was very disappointing, from the long wait time, messed up orders, poor customer service and limited availability of basic menu items I wasn't too impressed. This place has a lot of potential and a few simple tweaks could really  improve the customer experience.  Based on my overall experience there I would rate it 1/5. Foodstagram worthiness rating would be 3/5.  Foodstargram worthiness is basically how instagrammable a food experience is. Factors like how pretty the food is and the availability of photo backdrops are all considered. They did have a fun photo wall  but due to the long waits, that area was mostly crowded and hard to get a decent shot at a good angle.