Little Tokyo Will Finally Land Its Own Matcha Cafe

Despite the amount of authentic, rich Japanese foods you can get in Downtown LA’s Little Tokyo, a matcha bar has not opened in the neighborhood. Hopefully that changes very soon.

Mirroring a concept similar to New York City’s MatchaBar, Midori Matcha Café will be Downtown LA’s first matcha-focused café. The current matcha cafes you can find in L.A. are more westward, with Beverly Grove’s Matcha Box and Venice’s Shuhari Matcha Café. The bar will also be Midori’s first retail space to complement its current wholesale production in Los Angeles.

Originally a wholesale matcha purveyor founded by Jason Dmitry Steinbuchel, the business currently markets itself as a staple nutritious beverage. The organic and natural, ceremonial grade stone-ground matcha is grown in Japan and gets cold brewed and cold pressured into tasteful, minimalist-branded bottles in Los Angeles. You can currently find the trendy-looking bottles in health food grocery stores like Lassen’s Natural Foods, Erewhon, and select dining establishments around town.

From the looks of their Instagram, the café will take their matcha powder quite a few steps forward, and will be incorporated into sweet treats like matcha pastries, lattes, soft-serve, lemonade and more.

While the storefront, located in the Wellington Plaza, has signs announcing an opening of September 2016, the business is three months past its slated debut. There are also signs out front and online looking to hire employees in December, so it looks like we should be able to enjoy our hot matcha lattes in Little Tokyo within the next two months.