Matcha in London

The strongest sourcing credentials of any matcha operator in London. Founder Hiromi Matsunobu is a Japanese tea specialist with family roots in Yame, Fukuoka, one of Japan's premium green tea districts, and she started the business here in 2019. Unusually for a café, Matchado sells matcha by named cultivar rather than by a vague ceremonial-grade label: Yame Okumidori, Yame Yabukita, and Kyoto Saemidori, Samidori and Yabukita, all single origin. Those teas won Great Taste Awards in 2023 and again in 2026, which is a rare piece of third-party evidence in a category full of self-certification. In the cup it reads deep and savoury rather than sweet, thick-bodied with a clean grassy finish. This is the reference point the rest of this list should be judged against.

Five London cafés: King's Cross, Chiswick, Acton, Bloomsbury and Herne Hill. King's Cross at Coal Drops Yard is a takeaway window, so expect to walk the canal with it.

Europe's first luxury Korean matcha house and the most technically disciplined counter in London. Founder Sooji Im is an LSE graduate who worked in project finance before opening a tea house in Exmouth Market, and she sources every leaf herself from Hadong, said to be the birthplace of Korean tea, and from Jeju. She describes Korean matcha as softer and nuttier with subtle toasted undertones against the richer umami of Japanese matcha, and that is exactly how it drinks: lighter-bodied, gently roasted, far less astringent. Every drink is whisked in front of you at terrazzo stations, in a room of lime-washed walls, Bangjja Yugi bronze teaware and Korean straw rope. All milk alternatives are free, which is genuinely unusual in London.

Two sites: Covent Garden, built around the matcha counter, and a bakery-led Soho branch on Berwick Street. Covent Garden is the one to visit.

The closest London gets to a traditional Japanese tea room, and the only entry here that also teaches matcha. The name means roughly in times gone by, and the Angel room is furnished with antique Japanese pieces and early twentieth-century detail, with a small leafy garden at the back; the house calls it a place for casual ceremony. The tea list is the deepest of any café on this list, with ceremonial matcha alongside a long roster of sencha, hojicha and genmaicha, served in handmade ceramics you can buy on the way out. The matcha crêpe cake, impossibly thin layers with matcha cream, is the single most ordered thing in the building. They run matcha workshops too, which makes this the right recommendation for anyone who wants to learn to whisk rather than just drink.

Four London sites — Angel, Brick Lane, Broadway Market and inside Uniqlo on Long Acre — plus Edinburgh. Angel is the original tea room, with the garden behind.

The deepest heritage of any matcha name in London. The house was founded in Uji in 1860 by tea master Riemon Tsuji, who built his reputation on gyokuro, and the London arm still draws its matcha from Uji, the most prestigious growing region in Japan. That means the baseline quality is high and consistent in a way independents cannot always match. Understand it as a dessert tea house rather than a drinks bar: the soft serve, sundaes, parfaits and shaved ice are the reason for the queue, and the lattes are smooth and cleanly sweet rather than aggressively vegetal. The Chinatown room is small, bright and permanently busy. If you are introducing someone to matcha through pudding, start here.

Chinatown plus Camden's Hawley Wharf and three Westfield sites. Chinatown is the branch critics single out.

The London matcha café with the best ratio of hype to actual technique. It is run by a father-and-daughter team, Hanife and Ram Hursit, who opened the Caledonian Road site in 2025, and the flavour list reads like it should be gimmicky: Earl Grey, brown sugar, salted vanilla, strawberry, cold foams. It is not. Critics who checked the process found matcha meticulously weighed and whisked fresh for every order, with the texture living up to the name — dense stable foam rather than the thin bubbles most cafés settle for. Physically it is a sleek room built for staying, with window stools on Caledonian Road and a big communal table downstairs that fills with laptops. The queue is why the second branch exists.

Two sites: the Caledonian Road original with the downstairs communal table, and a Covent Garden branch on Bedfordbury opened in 2026.

The only café in London that makes you choose your matcha grade before you choose your drink, and that single decision is what earns it a place this high. The three house powders are graded by intensity and nuttiness — a smooth low-bitterness house blend, a rare hand-picked leaf, and a strong umami-forward option — so the same iced latte can be built light and grassy or dense and savoury. Almost no other London operator offers that control. Critics are clear that Konveni has always been about the green stuff rather than a coffee shop that added matcha later. The Kuromitsu, finished with a layer of toasted Japanese brown sugar, is the drink locals travel for. The room is bright and minimal with proper seating, which makes it one of very few genuine sit-down matcha specialists in West London.

Single site, and the only entry here with no website of its own — they trade through Instagram and delivery apps, where prices carry a markup.

The most specific sourcing story on this list. Their ceremonial-grade matcha comes from one tea farm in Shizuoka near the foothills of Mount Fuji, and is organic, first flush and single origin — a combination the company says applies to under one percent of matcha produced today. The result is noticeably smooth and low in bitterness, with a rounded sweetness that carries the thicker textures they build drinks around. The Evening Standard named it London's best hidden spot, because the original counter is buried inside a design-led homeware store behind shelves of Kinto and Puebco; you have to know it is there. The house motto is whisk with care, sipped with chill, cha no rush, which is a fair description of the pace. The Matcha Cloud is the drink everyone photographs, and the texture justifies it — dense and almost spoonable.

Hackney Wick original hidden inside the Jujuhome design store, plus Shoreditch and a counter on the third floor of Selfridges.

The most ambitious matcha brand in central London and the only one running a purpose-built three-floor flagship. All drinks are built on ceremonial-grade matcha sourced directly from farms in Kagoshima, Japan's largest-volume premium region and a softer, sweeter profile than Uji, which is why the sweetened and infused drinks here do not collapse into sugar. Critics describe the base matcha as smooth and balanced, and note the technique is serious on a normal weekday even though the room can turn into a scene. Interiors at both sites are laid out on feng shui principles; Notting Hill adds oak panelling, a wood-and-marble basement and a garden courtyard, which makes it the best matcha café in London for actually sitting for an hour.

Two sites. Marylebone is the original and busier counter, opening at 8am; the Notting Hill flagship on Ledbury Road is three storeys with a basement room and a rooftop courtyard if you want to sit.

Jenki did more than anyone to make good matcha normal in London. Founded in 2020 by Claudia and Otto Boyer after, in their telling, one too many coffee crashes, it opened its first matcha bar in 2021 when awareness of matcha in Britain was still close to nil. The matcha is 100% ceremonial grade from the foothills of Uji, stone-ground traditionally and whisked per order. The Evening Standard picks Jenki as its best for authentic matcha; the Infatuation is more equivocal and warns that not every flavour lands, which is the right way to read it. Judge it on the Flat Green rather than the novelties: a shot of matcha topped with milk, matcha's answer to a flat white, and an honest test of the tea.

Six matcha bars: Spitalfields flagship, Covent Garden, Borough Market, Canary Wharf, Battersea Power Station and Selfridges.

To be plain about it, Kuro is a specialty coffee shop rather than a matcha house, and it is on this list because two of London's most credible critics single out its matcha anyway. The Infatuation describes matcha whisked fresh by hand, worth the short wait, arriving a satisfying vibrant green with a smooth earthy flavour; DesignMyNight goes further and calls it the best iced matcha in London. The room is small, minimalist and Japanese-influenced, tucked among the pastel terraces of Hillgate Village, and the bench outside is famously never empty. The in-house bakery next door makes it the best pairing here. Come for a beautifully executed simple matcha, not for a flavour menu.

Notting Hill original plus a counter inside Harvey Nichols, and sibling Kuro Bakery and Kuro Bagels sites. Opens at 7am six days a week.