Green is in: Matcha has become ubiquitous among the fashion set, millennials, and Gen Z—even my boomer mom is obsessed—with nearly every cafe offering it alongside coffee, and plenty of cafes dedicated solely to matcha. From national matcha-devoted chains like Cha Cha Matcha, Matcha Café Maiko, and Kyo Matcha, to nearly every coffee shop from Starbucks to Blue Bottle to even Dunkin’ Donuts offering matcha lattes, it’s safe to say matcha is firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist.
Matcha is a vibrant green tea drink born in China and Japan thousands of years ago. It’s made from grinding green tea leaves—which can be varying grades of quality—into a fine powder, which is then whisked with hot water to create a thick, frothy liquid. In many modern cafes around the world, it’s combined with milk or an alternative milk to create a latte, and this is typically what you’ll find in most cafes serving matcha in the U.S.
But are you getting an authentic matcha at Dunkin’ Donuts? Definitely not (it’s green tea powder mixed with 32 grams of sugar, milk, and fruit pectin, according to their website). Even at most matcha-devoted places, your drink will likely be sweetened and watered down as a way to help cover up the bitter taste of lower-grade matcha. Over the last decade, in most of the U.S., matcha has become so far removed from its roots that it has become a coffee alternative at best and a TikTok trend at worst. And while these drinks might be tasty, if you’re looking for authentic, unadulterated matcha, it has been harder to find in the U.S.—until now.
While chains like Cha Cha Matcha, which opened in New York City in 2016 and has expanded to seven New York City and four Los Angeles locations, show no signs of slowing down, there has been a recent spate of more authentic matcha cafes utilizing extremely high-quality matcha unadulterated by sugar and other mix-ins. These boutique shops typically partner with a specific farm in Japan or Korea for sourcing, as opposed to the Japanese corporate distributors that the larger chains use.
But what exactly is the difference between a matcha latte from Starbucks and a so-called authentic matcha? We checked in with Darla Murray, the co-founder of Make, a premium matcha brand selling hand-selected tea direct to consumers.
“It’s like the difference between a bottle of small-batch, estate-grown wine and a mass-produced house wine. One tells a story of terroir, craftsmanship, and tradition. The other just fills a glass,” explains Murray. “While both are technically matcha (i.e., powdered green tea), premium matcha is vibrant green, smooth, and rich in umami. Commercial or bulk matcha is often a dull yellowish or brown color, coarse in texture, and noticeably bitter. The quality starts at the source: good matcha comes from young, shade-grown leaves that are hand-picked in the early spring and stone-ground in small batches. Lower-grade matcha is typically made from older summer or fall harvest leaves, picked by machine, and processed at scale—sacrificing flavor and nutritional integrity.”
There are also specific regions that are prized for growing the best matcha. “Like wine, the terroir also matters,” says Murray. “Matcha grown in regions like Uji or Nishio in Japan, where the soil, climate, and craftsmanship have been refined over centuries, produces a completely different experience than commodity-grade matcha grown elsewhere in the world.”
Recently, stylish New Yorkers have been lining up outside NoHo newcomer 12 Matcha on Bond Street, an independent matcha brand and café. Opened in April, it serves matcha drinks made from first-harvest, hand-picked tea from a premium farm in Uji. The café offers regular matcha and matcha lattes, hot or iced, and encourages customers to try their drinks without any sweeteners. Instead of a fast-serve model, after each guest orders, they step down to one of three stations to watch their drink be carefully hand-whisked by a trained employee in a sort of mini ritual more akin to a brief ballet than brewing a cappuccino.
Despite serving traditional matcha, instead of a more classic, tea-house-style design, 12 Matcha is stylish and modern, with a design by Ciguë (responsible for the design of Aesop’s stores) that features plenty of dark, reclaimed wood and curved glass. From the bar counter made of enameled lava stone to the custom-designed charcoal water rebalancing system that hovers dramatically over the counter, every element of the space speaks to the artistry and naturalness behind the tea.
“We wanted a preparation process that’s filled with intentionality and care, but at the same time we want our guests who come into the space to feel a coziness and be able to have a dialogue with the person making their matcha,” explains Alan Jiang, founder and co-owner of 12 Matcha. “Tea, for centuries, has been forming relationships, and we understand there are limitations with this type of delivery, but a simple two-to-three-minute interaction in front of each station, we hope, can show people the heart and care that we put into each and every cup.”
Jiang, who’s originally from Hong Kong, intended to work in data science after he graduated from Cornell University a few years ago. Instead, in his last year, he took what he thought would be a fun class by Dr. Christopher Loss: Introduction to Food Science. There, he learned how to make ice cream and decided to change his career path completely. He asked Dr. Loss to join his venture, and he also reached out to the fifth-generation, 180-year-old Hotta family from Uji to directly source their green tea leaves—and work with the family’s tea master, Haruhide Morita, who has been awarded the highest honor as Japan’s top tea appraiser. Morita serves as an advisor to 12, ensuring that every leaf they use is first-harvest, hand-picked, and carefully roasted to bring out its best flavors, eliminating the need for sweeteners. 12 also collaborates with chef Francisco Migoya, pastry chef at Noma, to create premium matcha and hojicha ice cream and matcha Basque cheesecake to supplement their beverages.
Murray notes that a shop like 12 might not have been successful five years ago, but 15 years ago it might have had a niche audience. “Traditionally-prepared matcha cafes are on the rise now, but ironically, if you walked into a cafe 15 years ago and saw matcha on the menu, chances are it was actually great quality—because someone behind the bar was probably a matcha enthusiast,” says Murray. “But as matcha’s popularity exploded in the past decade, it’s become something cafe feel they have to offer, even if they don’t know much about it. So, unless a cafe is known for serving high-quality matcha, odds are they’re just buying something in bulk to tick that box.”
But now, 12 isn’t the only authentic matcha cafe in New York—or the U.S. Not too far away in Soho is Sōrate, a matcha cafe that opened at the very end of 2023. Inside a narrow slip of a space, the design here is slightly more traditional, with elements recalling a tea house while still managing to feel of-the-moment-New-York. The front part of the cafe is for to-go matchas, but each drink still takes several minutes to make, and only uses first-harvest green tea from Uji. Like at 12, customers are encouraged to try the drink without milk or sweetener, but the amount of matcha lattes being ordered is still high—and helps keep them in business. The far end of the bar has four seats for customers with reservations who want to do a traditional tasting with ceramic accessories.
Started by Silvia Mella, an Italian living in New York who fell in love with Japan when she visited several years ago, Sōrate first as an online venture selling matcha powder and accessories produced in Japan. “In Japan, there are beautiful tea houses surrounded by nature, and you really feel very relaxed when you’re inside them,” says Mella. “I never experienced that before, and there was never an opportunity in the States to experience that.” When she returned to the U.S., she met Keiko Kitazawa, a tea master living in new Jersey who became her mentor.
Guests can book tastings with Kitazawa on certain days, and she will appear in a kimono to guide them through a matcha tasting with a few Japanese snacks. Kitazawa has helped Mella and her partner Nicola Zanatta ensure everything they do is authentic and intentional.
“These four seats [at the end of the bar] help us educate the customers a little bit that matcha latte is not matcha—it should be drunk with just water and no other sugar,” explains Mella. They give a small sugar candy to suck before sipping the matcha for those who want some sweetness.
It’s these small adjustments that are slowly educating more and more Americans. “People are beginning to understand that matcha isn’t just a photogenic drink or an alternative caffeine fix, it’s a cultural practice with deep roots in Japanese tradition,” says Murray. “The new generation of matcha drinkers want the ritual, the intentionality, the connection to something meaningful.”
Still, there’s always room for innovation and playfulness. 12 offers matcha ice cream and matcha cheesecake, and Jin Jin Matcha in Tacoma, in addition to offering unsweetened water-based matcha, also has the newly popular strawberry matcha latte on its menu (albeit theirs comes with no artificial coloring and only fruit extract). And this summer, Make is partnering with a few different restaurants on a matcha martini and a matcha ice cream sandwich. “Creative flavor pairings like this have long been commonplace in Japan,” Murray notes. “On my most recent trip there, I tried a matcha beer and a matcha KitKat bar.”
The West Coast is also joining the authentic matcha renaissance. Kettl, a Brooklyn tea shop and cafe focused on top-quality Japanese tea, including matcha, recently opened a Los Angeles outpost. Rocky s Matcha is an online matcha brand based in Los Angeles selling first harvest tea and ceramic accessories, that, since 2022, pops up at events, cafes, and stores around L.A., Chicago, New York, and Miami, and Tea Master of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles focuses on Japanese green tea and matcha sourced from first-harvest family farms in Yame, Shizuoka, and Mei.
Stonemill Matcha in San Francisco debuted in 2018 by Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, with a mission to highlight attention to detail and omotenashi, the Japanese concept that translates to hospitality—from harvest to packaging and brewing—and to provide top-quality, unadulterated matcha to customers. “The thought is to meet guests where it is recognizable and familiar, so while we do provide hand-whisked matcha service, we make matcha lattes as well,” says Sakaguchi.
And sourcing is of utmost importance. “You may have experienced matcha in the past when you take a sip, there’s a slightly sour note, or there is an excess of bitterness,” says Sakaguchi. “It’s important for people to experience—especially for their first time—the umami and grassiness and earthiness of what real quality matcha should be. At least in the U.S., there are varying qualities, and we want people to understand the standard firsthand.”
Jin Jin Matcha is preparing to open its second location in Seattle. Owner Sarah Oh moved back to her native Washington after living in New York, where, as a matcha drinker, she became a Kettl regular. When she returned to Tacoma during the pandemic, she realized the only Asian tea shops around were focused on boba, and with coffee as king in Seattle, she decided to open her own matcha café, where she focuses on sustainable sourcing and authentic service.
“I knew from the jump that I wanted to work with single cultivar producers and tea farmers,” says Oh. “All of our drinks will always be hand-whisked in a traditional method, with a bamboo whisk. We temper water, we use four grams of matcha, and every drink is from the first harvest.”
When she began reaching out to farmers in Japan and Korea in 2021, almost no one else on the West Coast had done so yet. She visits her supplier farms twice a year and makes sure she knows everyone touching the tea. Fast forward to 2025, and after recently returning from Japan she reports that it’s matcha wars there due to a shortage for this year’s harvest.
“Tourism in Japan is insane right now, and matcha is a huge part of it, because it’s become a trend,” says Oh. “For me, as someone who opened this cafe when it wasn’t a trend, it’s quite scary. Of course, I’ve seen a huge rise in business, but this isn’t something I started to be part of a trend. I avoided bright colors and Instagram focus image images for a reason—because for me, it’s more about heritage and legacy.”
Marc Falzon, co-owner with Joann Lui of New Jersey-based Ooika—possibly the most traditional matcha cafe in the country—has a different view of the recent shortage, though. “The future of traditional matcha depends on the West. Without demand from abroad, many of the traditional cultivation techniques will become extinct,” he says in an email from Japan, where he was visiting during the harvest season. “There is just not enough domestic interest [in traditional matcha] in Japan.”
Ooika operates the most Ishi Usu (Japanese stone mills) in the U.S.: Ooika’s customers sip carefully whisked matcha as they listen to the whir of stone mills in the refinery behind them. Ooika serves Japan’s rarest matcha, Tencha, and only serves unsweetened drinks from tea that has been ground no more than 24 hours before. While guests can add sweetener to some beverages, if they order a Usucha or Koicha, a traditional bowl of single-origin matcha similar to a single-origin pour over, they cannot add any sweetener.
“Like fine wine, Matcha can connect us to generations of craftsmanship, terroirs, and flavors that can’t be reproduced with low quality material,” says Ooika.
As the matcha industry in Japan adjusts to a new demand for higher quality powder, it’s only a matter of time until even more authentic cafes open here. “It feels like we’re moving out of the novelty phase and into a chapter of real appreciation,” says Murray. “And while it may feel new, it’s worth remembering that matcha has been an integral part of Japanese culture and diet for over a thousand years. What is gaining popularity in the U.S. is simply timeless elsewhere.”
