For all our over-caffeinated clean-living pals, enter the Matcha Bar on Saturday, July 13th—opening in the perfect location for a matcha bar, the very bougie Powerscourt Centre. The pop-up will be running from the gorgeously lit second floor, for six weeks but owner Elle told us she is hopeful to stay on if things go well.
With a family involved in the hospitality sector, this is not an unusual jump for Elle to take. This venture is a real if you can't see it, build it project, as she told us about her struggle to find "a decent matcha in Dublin" led her to opening the Matcha Bar. "They’re either too bitter, too milky or just not the real deal (pre mixed with sugars) and very hit and miss everywhere," she told us, "I’d been travelling a bit over the last few years and started to see matcha-only cafes in places like LA, Paris, London, Mexico and it just got me thinking this is exactly what Ireland needs."
Since beginning her journey a few months back, Elle has been documenting her business journey on Tiktok, from conception to an R&D trip to Japan to source the very best organic ceremonial grade matcha directly from farmers over there, she told us "I visited lots of farms and factories till I came across the supplier I decided to import from directly from Japan."
She's also set up a test kitchen and has been trialling her own matcha recipes, with some great flavour combos like the strawberry iced matcha and the rose iced matcha.
A point of differentiation for the matches created in the Matcha Bar is the lack of refined sugars or sugar syrups in our matcha lattes with Elle telling us that they will be using all clean ingredients including natural sweeteners in the form of honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar and agave. "Matcha has more antioxidants per gram than spinach and blueberries so to pack it full of crap and sugar defeats the purpose," she added.
Elle's goal is to empower people to drink matcha everyday, guilt-free without that "knowing they’re benefiting health wise and knowing they’re refined sugar-free, matcha is a clean source of green energy…and gives us a slow release of caffeine over 4-6 hours meaning we get a more focused energy as opposed to that jittery buzz for 1- 3 hour with coffee."
The popularity of matcha has grown significantly over the last few years which Elle puts down to, "the increasing awareness of its health benefits, and also the effects aren’t as extreme as coffee. I've noticed a lot of people looking for healthier alternatives to coffee that don’t give you that mid day slump or jitters, and matcha is the answer to that. I think there is also a growing demand for plant-based and natural food and beverage options. There’s a massive emphasis on health and wellness in general over the last few years and people are far more health conscious now," she added, "social media has definitely played a huge role too, its a photogenic drink and people like to snap their food and drink and have a bit of an experience when they go out - so I think matcha lends itself nicely to that."
Starting out as a pop-up location, but judging by the commotion it's making on TikTok Dubliners are very excited about this particular opener. You'll find The Matcha Bar in the second floor of the Powerscourt Centre, where they'll be slinging matcha of all varieties alongside matcha cookies and matcha cookie pies.
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