I recently had the chance to try out some taiyaki soft serve! Here are my thoughts on this popular and expanding taiyaki soft serve franchise, Somisomi! If you're in Southern California, you might stumble upon them on your shopping trip at the mall.
Overall: 4 🌟/5 🌟
Ice cream + taiyaki: 5 🌟/5 🌟
The price for a fish cone + soft serve ice cream is $5.95, you can pick any flavor of soft serve they're offering (they seem to rotate flavors every month or so) or two flavors in a swirl. They offer flavors such as milk, matcha, black sesame, ube (aka taro), oreo, and banana, but they seem to only offer 3-4 at a time with variations in the swirls. Also, you can fill your fish cone with nutella, custard, or red bean and put as many toppings as you want on top which range from macarons, strawberries, pocky, sprinkles, cereal(fruity pebbles, cocoa pebbles), and other types of flakes (oreo, coconut). I found the soft serve to be filling when eaten with the fish cone, it tastes like a soft and bready waffle. Depending on the combination of soft serve flavors, filling, and topping you pick can make your experience enjoyable or an overkill on the sweetness. Eat this fast or you will be a dripping mess!
I got the milk/ube swirl, custard filling, with a pocky stick, and fruity pebbles. They're generous with their toppings, I love that! However, I got ube which is normally a very sweet flavor, I felt it was too sweet combined with my fruity pebbles. As for the filling, custard has semi-sweet subtle flavor, can you imagine if I got nutella? Yikes.
Ice cream: 5🌟/5🌟
If you're not as hungry and just want some soft-serve, they offer it in a cup for $3.75 which is worth it because you can put as many toppings as you want on top as well. Their ice cream is super smooth, silky, and creamy. The matcha isn't as strong or bitter as other places I've tried so if you don't like that strong tea flavor, go here! The milk just tastes like sweet milk with a hint of vanilla. The ube is very very sweet tastes like ube and I don't care for it. Once you take a bite you instantly know what the flavor is!
I learned my lesson from the picture above, ask for less toppings if you want to enjoy the flavor of your ice cream. I really like the combination of milk/matcha because paired with milk as it has a sweet subtle flavor, the bitterness of matcha wouldn't be too overwhelming for me. They sprinkled a bit of matcha powder on the matcha side to give the flavor more depth and bitterness. I like the combination of the strawberry with the match and fruity pebbles, maybe I'm just biased because I love fruity pebbles. Definitely pick matcha if you don't have a huge sweet tooth.
Taiyaki: 2🌟/5🌟
If you don't want soft serve at all, they offer taiyaki with 4 types of filling red bean, custard, nutella, and cheese, 2 for $3.50 or 5 for $7.95. I didn't really like this as much as I thought I would as they were a bit small. The outside was slightly crispy but not enough and when I got the inside it was very very doughy. I felt like I was eating it raw since it wasn't cooked thoroughly, while cooking the taiyaki they put a small scoop of filling in that didn't really spread even when the bread waffle cooked. You have to go to the very center for the filling. Maybe after 30 minutes or so the whole thing just got soggy which sucks if you order a lot. I was disappointed and not impressed.
Service: 5🌟/5🌟
I've been to two of their locations, every single time I went they were always super polite, helpful, and their service is top notch! They also have to wear a mouth guard when work so spit doesn't fly into your food when they talk, amazing! They call your name for your order and listen to the amount of toppings you want. Nothing to complain about! Since it's located in a mall, depending on the day of the week and time there may or may not be a line. Either way they serve you super fast!