Daniel L.
Yelp
I had to wait a half hour outside in the rain in Times Square so I am not going to be rounding up starpower on what was largely a mid experience at best. Is it "viral" on the tiktok and worth checking out? That's probably why there is a queue of 30 minutes or MORE, hoss. This review isn't for them, this review is for people on the fence about having to queue up 30+ minutes for a donut.
I was in Japan during sakura season and the waits for the Japan locations were around two hours or worse, and they stupidly did not have a feature like at Tokyo DisneySea where you could just pay 1,000 yen (something like 6 USD or 10 CAD) to skip the queue like I did at Tower of Terry because I am not a patient person, and I will pay up to--and including--one sawbuck apparently to skip a hearty 200+ minute queue at the Tower of Terror at least so I can get on with the rest of my day.
Off of the main sidewalk they have a corral area where you wait in the first queue of the day until you level up to the next queue on the actual sidewalk in front of the store on 45th. They have a queue monitor at the head of the corral area that tells you when you can get promoted up to the other queue. When you hit the main queue on 45th it is about 5-10 minutes until you make it close enough to the front entrance when you get a paper menu to make selections with a pen.
Besides the wait, rain, and being in the nadir of the universe that is Times Square, my first real demerit particular to this place comes in. They do not tell you on your little paper menu what they are sold out of. You just circle whatever you want like an idjit, thinking they have whatever you circle in stock or they can go out back and make some more.
You are allowed into the store proper maybe 5 minutes after you make your selections on the paper menu. Only then when your paper menu is being checked for accuracy in the next queue up to the register do you find out that they do not have what you selected. So you just waited for 25ish minutes or longer by that point. No matcha creme donut. Yelp doesn't allow emojis but there is no crestfallen emoji that conveys the personal donut-related level of devastation experienced at that point. I feel like they need to do a better job of communicating what they are out of before you have waited forever.
I went with just the regular old cake style matcha donut and an iced matcha. Despite it being clear what I ordered they at first tried to ring me up as only the matcha donut. I explained I had an iced matcha. I felt like I was in a bad SNL skit that they couldn't read and I was having to tell them to read the paper again since it was clearly marked. If I had a poodle, someone would have needed to hold my poodle before too long.
It was another 5 minute queue for the iced matcha in I suppose the "final boss fight queue" after numerous queues already. The matcha donut was ready immediately. The donut was not warm or anything, so it was not a real bother, but it would have been if a fresh warm donut was just sitting there waiting for the iced matcha to join it. See credentials above for having spent time in actual Japan, when I say the iced matcha is not even the right colour, and it was the worst iced matcha I have ever had. Absolutely skip that, simply dreadful, but fitting for your average Times Square experience to be awful and overpriced.
The nama style matcha donut was far more impressive than the worst iced matcha I have ever had. The donut was incredibly moist and delightful. And it was green, boy howdy.
Since the pandemic, everyone sends me the tiktok videos of the NAMA Bites family and says the little boy reminds them of me and how I act in the food world. I always take that as a high compliment, for age 13 or thereabouts in the videos he is an incredibly kind and polite Canadian, worships Anthony Bourdain, and is articulate. I am not sure what connection they have to nama-nama as I use nama throughout this review, but nama means "fresh" or "raw" in Japanese, and accurately reflects the light, soft, and moist texture of these donuts. Like everything Japanese, explicitly except the awful Panasonic electric shaver I just returned on the amazon, the nama donut is an elevated art form. At I'm Donut Times Square they just tapped all their land mana cards for the donut and left none for the iced matcha.
In short, if you did not want to wait 2 hours in Japan during sakura season but are willing to wait 30 minutes, this is it for you to try this joint out. Just don't expect to order what you actually want since they may be out of it, but you won't happen upon that information until you physically enter the store after 30ish plus minutes outside.
Was this experience worth $13.07? No. In Japan it would have been half of that or less with the exchange rate, but that would have been two hours of my life away from filling more of my goshuincho. Is that going to stop the tiktok virality? Also no.
Don't forget to bring a towel.