Featured shop
Matcha doesn’t
have to be bitter.
MAISON YUKI / Nakameguro, Tokyo
Tea from Shirakawa in Uji, stone-ground each morning and finished by closing. Six seats at a counter, one bowl made at a time.
What they pour
- Region
- 宇治・白川Shirakawa, Uji
- Grower
- 中村家 — 四代目The Nakamura family, fourth generation
- Harvest
- 一番摘み・覆下栽培 二十日First harvest, twenty days under shade
- Method
- 朝挽き・石臼Stone-ground each morning
- Space
- 六席Six seats, counter only
This was never
meant to be a tea shop.
“I was making tea for patients after their treatment. It was just something I enjoyed doing.”
The room began as an acupuncture clinic. The owner would whisk a bowl for patients once the session was over, for no reason other than wanting to. People started coming back for the tea, and then there were more of them than chairs. At some point, he says, it had become a shop.
There are still only six seats. He will not add more, because every bowl is made individually. “Any more than that and I stop being able to watch them.” The counter is a single cedar plank, set so that customers can see his hands while he works. No tables, no music.
Three years to settle
on this one farm.
“I visited four growers. Two of them sold very good tea
and would not tell me which field it came from.”
Taste was not what decided it. Over three years he visited four producers and chose on one condition: whether they would name the field and the person who farmed it. What was left was the Nakamura family, who have worked the same slope in Shirakawa, Uji, since the 1890s.
Shirakawa is where shade-growing is said to have begun. The plots are small and the slope is awkward, so few new fields are planted. The Nakamuras keep the leaves covered for twenty days before picking. Fifteen is the usual figure.
Asked what it tastes like, the owner answers plainly. “Sweet — that is what I hear most. People arrive expecting matcha to be bitter and are surprised by the first mouthful. And that it holds up as it cools. You can leave it ten minutes while you talk and it still won’t turn sharp.”
Every judgement he makes
is inside a single bowl.
Four decisions stand between the tea and the counter. Here they are, in order.
Ground on a stone mill each morning and finished by closing. Matcha begins to oxidise the moment it is milled, and the aroma goes with it. Grinding ahead would let him serve more, and he doesn’t. The number of bowls in a day is set by what was ground that morning.
Nothing straight off the boil. Hot water brings the bitterness forward and takes away the sweetness those twenty days under cover were for. He boils in an iron kettle, pours into a cooling bowl, then whisks. Every single time.
Nothing is made in batches. The six seats are a number worked backwards from this step. “Any more than that and I stop being able to watch them.”
The same Bizen bowls, every day, for eleven years. Bizen is fired without glaze, so tea soaks into it and the colour deepens. He doesn’t put out new ones because that change is part of the tea. Chips are repaired with gold and the bowl stays in service.
First time? Drink it
with nothing in it.
This is what he says to anyone who has not been before. “I ask them to take one mouthful with nothing added. Just decide whether it reads sweet or bitter. Then I ask what they liked and we choose the second one together. And I tell them there is no need to finish it if it isn’t for them.”
What the four decisions
turn out to have in common.
Four separate rules,
saying one thing.
Grind only in the morning. Cool the water for every bowl. Never work in batches. Never change the ware. Listening to him, these sounded like four unrelated habits.
Set side by side, every one of them is a limit that keeps a single bowl within his reach. Not grinding ahead caps how many he can serve. Cooling the water costs time on each one. Whisking individually is what fixes the room at six seats. All four push in the same direction: away from growth.
Not taking reservations follows from the same place. Bookings would make the day predictable, but a shop that runs out when the morning’s grinding runs out cannot promise anyone a seat. This is a shop that gave up scale in order to keep the bowl.
It is probably also where the line about not having to finish comes from. Whether the tea suits you is being put ahead of whether it sells.
If you are going.
Find it
- Address
- 1-2-3 Aobadai, Meguro-ku, Tokyo
- Hours
- Tue–Sun, 10:00–19:00. Closed Mondays.
- Seats
- Six at the counter. No reservations.
- On the map
- See it on the Matcha Atlas →