New SLO County spot serves up boba tea, Hawaiian shave ice ‘for the locals’

A new business is serving up boba tea and Hawaiian-style shave ice in Pismo Beach.

PCH Shave Ice & Boba is celebrating its grand opening at 893 N. Oak Park Blvd. on Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Co-owner Diane Cabrera came up with the idea for the restaurant after years of driving to Los Angeles to visit family members. Each time Cabrera visited southern California, she and her son would stop by a shave ice place.

“I just started thinking, ‘Why don’t we have a place like that? Here, for the locals,’ ” she said.

After being a high school and junior high school teacher for the past two decades, Cabrera began to research what it meant to start a business.

“The pandemic kind of settled in my mind that it was time for me to get out of teaching,” Cabrera said.

The name of her business, PCH, stands for “Pacific Coast Hawaiian,” but is also a play on Highway 1’s nickname, Pacific Coast Highway, according to Diane.

PCH Shave Ice & Boba held its soft opening on June 11, hosting a special event prior to opening its doors to the public.

She and her husband Eric co-own the business, and currently run it with the help of their son Elijah.

“It’s just the three of us,” Eric Cabreba said while working behind the counter.

As its name implies, PCH Shave Ice specializes in authentic Hawaiian-style shave ice, which features a mound of ice cream covered in shaved ice, with a drizzle of sweetened condensed milk on top.

It’s “totally NOT the same as a snow cone,” the business explained in an Instagram post.

Options include such island-friendly flavors as pineapple, coconut and orange.

The shop also has a wide range of boba drinks, also known as bubble teas. Featured flavors include passionfruit green tea, Thai tea and a blended taro and ube purple yam milk tea.

Diane Cabrera decided to add the beverage to the menu after researching boba’s growing popularity. Each drink comes with a wide straw in order to eat the tapioca pearls at the bottom.

Open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., the store will close early in preparation for its grand opening, Thursday at 5:30 p.m. and Friday at 4 p.m.

At Saturday’s opening, customers can enter to win a raffle for free boba and shave ice.

Stay updated by following PCH Shave Ice & Boba on Instagram at @pchshaveice.