Sourced directly from Uji, Japan
Cart
0
There's a phrase I hear all the time: "matcha is matcha." As if it all comes from the same place, tastes the same way, does the same thing for you. It doesn't. And once you understand why, you start noticing the tell everywhere — in the milk, in the syrup, in the mountain of foam sitting on top of your latte.
That foam isn't a flavour choice. A lot of the time, it's a disguise.
My disappointment started before the first sip
When I was new to matcha and still finding my footing here in Dubai, I did what everyone does — I looked up the best matcha in Dubai and went to the three most talked-about spots in the city. The ones with the queues, the ones people name when they say "oh, you have to try my favourite matcha place."
At each one, I asked the barista the same thing: can I see the powder? Can I smell it?
My heart sank before I'd tasted anything. You can read a matcha the way you read a good olive oil or a coffee — the colour, the fineness, the aroma. What I saw and smelled told me most of the story: dull tone, flat nose, nothing vibrant.
And here's the part that actually made the point for me. The drink still tasted good.
Think about what that means. If the base is mediocre and the final cup is still enjoyable, something is doing a lot of heavy lifting. That something is sugar, milk, and cream. They're not there to elevate the matcha. They're there to cover it.
Why so much sugar? Because bad matcha needs it
Low-grade matcha tends to come from a later harvest, and it's often not stored or processed with much care. The result is a powder that's harshly bitter and astringent — genuinely unpleasant to drink on its own.
So what do you do with a bitter, astringent powder? You drown it. You add enough milk and sweetener that the taste of the matcha more or less disappears, and what's left is a sweet, creamy, comforting drink that happens to be green.
And matcha, I'll be honest, behaves beautifully with sugar. It transforms. We make a lot of matcha desserts at home, so I know exactly how forgiving it becomes once sweetness enters the picture. That's precisely why the disguise works so well — and why so few people ever question it.
The craze is real, and there's a reason for it
I don't think matcha's popularity is just a trend or an aesthetic. It's not only about that Instagram-green colour. There's a real, almost chemical reason people fall for it.
Matcha carries caffeine, but it also carries L-theanine, an amino acid that softens and smooths the caffeine into something calm and focused rather than jittery. That combination — alert but steady — is genuinely pleasant. Add a little sweetness on top and you've got something close to bliss in a cup.
Most people sipping their daily matcha latte couldn't tell you why they love it. They just know they keep coming back. The honest answer is the caffeine-and-L-theanine lift, dressed up in sugar. That's the real engine behind matcha steadily eating into coffee culture.
Singapore gave me the clearest comparison
About a year ago I spent time visiting matcha cafes in Singapore — a useful place to judge this, because Japanese food culture there is more evolved than it is in Dubai. If anywhere outside Japan should get matcha right, it's Singapore.
And yet some of the most popular, highest-rated spots on Google served matcha I found genuinely poor. That taught me something worth repeating: a high rating measures the experience, not the tea. Good service, nice interiors, sweet drinks — that's what gets five stars. The rating is often scoring the disguise.
But Singapore also showed me the other side. I visited cafes where the matcha was actually excellent, and you could feel it — in the colour, in the aroma, in the whole drink. One place in particular, a highly regarded brand, I went to their main branch. The powder I smelled was premium. They used a genuinely generous amount of matcha. I watched the process, and something about the tea itself was simply different. That latte hit the mark.
Places like that are the exception. Few and far between. But they prove it can be done right — most just choose not to, because doing it right is harder and costs more.
Strawberry matcha, and the trend layer
Strawberry matcha is everywhere right now, and I've got nothing against the pairing. But I tried one of these strawberry matcha lattes and it was flat — pretty and pink, and hollow underneath. It's the perfect example of the trend layer: an eye-catching drink built on a forgettable base. I'm not anti-strawberry. I'm anti-hiding.
Ceremonial vs culinary grade: why good matcha is "expensive"
This is where the ceremonial-vs-culinary question comes in (I've written a separate piece on the grades, so I won't repeat all of it here). Ceremonial grade matcha is expensive for a reason: earliest harvest, careful shading, careful storage, careful stone-grinding. That's what gives you a matcha smooth enough to enjoy with just water — no rescue mission required.
So when people ask why is matcha so expensive, the fuller answer is this: there's also a cost to buying very cheap matcha. You just don't see it on the menu. You pay it in the sugar you're forced to add, and you pay it in the calories and health cost that come with it.
What "expensive" actually pays for
I'll be transparent, because it's part of the point. When we bring matcha from Uji to Dubai, our prices can look expensive at first glance. Part of that is the tea. Part of it is the slower, harder work of consumer education — writing pieces like this one, running live events, creating real experiences so people can taste the difference for themselves.
The easy path is to buy cheap matcha, bury it in sugar and foam, build a photogenic setup, and call yourself the best matcha latte in town. The harder path is to sell the real thing and take the time to explain why it's different. We chose the harder one.
And I'm optimistic about it. With good information now at everyone's fingertips — and with how fast people learn in the age of AI — I think this generation will get to better decisions much quicker than the last.
You don't have to give up sugar — just wake it up
Let me be clear, because I'm not here to lecture anyone: I'm not telling you to quit sugar and drink bitter tea like it's medicine. Nobody's giving that up, and no blog is going to change that.
What I'm saying is gentler. When the matcha is genuinely good, you can enjoy it with the right amount of sweetness — enough to appreciate the sugar, but not so much that it erases everything else. You get to actually taste the matcha: the depth, the subtle umami, that gentle edge of bitterness that makes it interesting. You appreciate matcha for what it is.
It's okay to pay a small premium for that. But more than the money, it's about being a little more aware — making slightly better choices at the margin, so your drink satisfies your cravings and your taste buds, and still gives you something back.
Because here's the plain truth to end on: if you're drowning your matcha in sugar and cream every single day, the calories will far outweigh whatever benefits you came for. The "healthy" daily latte quietly stops being healthy. You end up paying — twice — to cancel out the very reason you started.
Matcha isn't matcha. Taste the good stuff, and you'll never mistake the two again.
