when you want, where you want.
Is New York About to Go Crazy for This Matcha Latte?
Photo: Michael Carbone
The Hotta family has been growing and selling tea in Japan for five generations, a period of time that stretches across 180 years. For 55 of those years, Haruhide Morita has been tea master and special adviser. And four years ago, Alan Jiang was still an undergrad at Cornell University when he began thinking about how to translate that history and tradition into a modern business. This week, the group will open 12 in Noho, a new café and retail shop designed to do that via matcha lattes, vibrant ice cream, and experiential tastings.
This town, of course, has plenty of matcha: There are at least seven Cha Cha Matchas and eight Matchaful cafés dotted around Manhattan and Brooklyn. There are two outposts of Kettl and one Setsugekka, both excellent. Then there’s every other coffee shop and tea parlor in New York. Undoubtedly, this city is contributing to the current global-matcha shortage.
But 12 has the benefit of working directly with a family of farmers, just one of the ways this café is different. Jiang wants to make something that is intentionally cerebral but nevertheless approachable and fun. In addition to Jiang and Morita, the team at 12 includes Dr. Christopher Loss, a professor in the food-science department at Cornell; Francisco Migoya, currently the head of pastry at Noma; the French design collective Cigüe, whose work you’ve seen if you’ve walked into an Aesop store or the % Arabica in Dumbo; and Grace Phillips, the general manager, who has worked in hospitality around the city for years.
The attention to detail is evident as soon as you enter the two-story café. The color green is everywhere, most prominently on the countertops made of lava stone from a quarry in Volvic, France, that’s been glazed in an emerald-colored enamel created specifically for 12. The clay walls are painted in a gentle green-putty hue, meanwhile, and “we also played with filtered light to subtly mimic the dappled shading of tea fields,” says Camille Bénard, one of Cigüe’s co-founders.
Above the bar are three large glass vessels, a little alien in nature. “Water became something that we are obsessed with,” Jiang explains. The vessels contain two-foot-long sticks of binchotan charcoal that filter NYC tap, gently releasing bubbles throughout the day. “The binchotan makes a very nice little catacomb that allows the water to quiescently filter through,” says Loss, who studies flavor science and the sensory qualities of food. He found that after eight hours with the sticks, the pH of the water became slightly more alkaline, which helps to round out the acidity of the tea.
Photo: Michael Carbone
Jiang says he wants guests to focus on all three elements of matcha: the tea, the water, and the air. “Not just in terms of the flavor itself,” he says, “but the visual to be able to prime the senses.” What does that have to do with ice cream? Migoya — from Noma — was introduced to Jiang by Loss, who worked with him at the Culinary Institute of America decades ago. He’s devising sweets that put Morita’s special blends to culinary use. I tasted Migoya’s matcha ice cream both in frozen scoop form as well as freshly spun in the ice-cream machine, which was full of flavor and verve. Migoya has also engineered a bright-green Basque cheesecake and is working on matcha chocolate, trying to find the right balance of the astringency between the tea and sugar.
In addition to in-store tastings, an iced matcha latte will likely be the main attraction at 12. The tea is whisked under a spotlight and poured over milk — Battenkill for dairy, Califia Barista Blend for oat — for a drink that is grassy, creamy, and spring-pea-like in its savoriness. Taking into account the consideration that has gone into each element, the price — $7 — seems almost like a deal. It is also, as Morita sees it, important to create a way forward for matcha. “If it’s something good, it should naturally expand,” he says. “There’s a part of me that feels we should continuously promote these good things, otherwise, they’ll disappear.”
More New Bars and Restaurants