Macha Tea Company in Madison, Wisconsin. A gem on E. Johnson Street. They sell looseleaf teas and tea accessories and serve brewed teas and small batch baked goods at the tea bar. Macha Tea Company also offers Friday lunch and Sunday brunch (menus are posted the evening before on Facebook and Instagram and change each week).
I’ve lived in Madison for 5 years now and this was my first time going to Macha Tea Company. Maybe it’s my recent love of everything matcha, maybe it was because I just returned from NYC and went to Matchaful and loved it.
For whatever reason, I finally made my way over here and loved it. I started with the Ceremonial Matcha, which was good and strong but a little too intense for me. I asked for more hot water to add into it. The lady sitting next to me told me I should have been given a whisk/brush of some sort to mix my matcha but I didn’t get one. After I added more hot water, it was good.
I’ll definitely be back and will try something else. My red bean and matcha cupcake was excellent and I was transported back to my childhood, where I ate red bean filled goodies from my mom’s Korean grocery store all the time.
I stayed and ordered lunch and was not expecting the amazing tofu dish I was about to eat. I ordered their Sichuan Tofu + Mushrooms: soft tofu, soy glaze, sichuan peppercorn, chili oil, shiitake, bok choy, sesame, scallions and brown rice.
I got this at a tea shop.
What a delightful surprise. As it’s stated above, they have Friday lunch and Sunday brunch (menus are posted the evening before on Facebook and Instagram and change each week). I love that they do this! and I had to ask my friends where the Asian influence came from in the menu. I believe Rachel Verbrick, who owns Macha Tea Company, with her husband Anthony, is half Chinese. I love it.
Everyone else there already knew about these Friday lunches. . people stopping in and ordering food to go. . sitting and drinking matcha tea .. sitting with friends and chatting and some, just on their laptops. . but Macha Tea Company does not offer free wifi on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. I thought it was so people could actually sit and have a conversation or enjoy their tea. . but my friends told me it’s so they can move people in and out faster. (?)
I really enjoyed it . . if you’re looking for some great tea, and some great baked treats, definitely check out Macha Tea Company. 823 E. Johnson Street.
“What began as an art gallery morphed into a teahouse and is now a simple and peaceful place to order quality teas suited for everyday drinking. While our love of tea started at a young age, it was many years later during travel to other amazing teahouses that we realized we had only just begun to scratch the surface. We dedicated the next seven years to learning, tasting, and refining our tea list in addition to crafting our own handblended teas using the best ingredients available. Our rotating offerings include solid single origin teas from experienced tea producers, our handpicked selections of Japanese matcha, and our own line of creative tea blends.”
Their business philosophy.
“We love tea. So much that we drink it all the time and forget how much we’re consuming until we are wide awake at 3 am— still. thinking. about. tea. But we get up the next day and do it all over again.
During the 7 years that we ran our tearoom in Madison, Wisconsin, we learned a lot. But mostly that simplicity is where it’s at. And people just want great tea that doesn’t cost $50 an ounce. Seems reasonable.
So here we are. Keeping things simple. We love working with farms and producers who create beautiful teas with integrity and consistency. We want to offer fantastic matcha. With our tea blends it’s important to use ingredients we can feel good about ingesting. Because everybody knows tea doesn’t taste like bubble gum naturally, so why go there? We don’t.
No fads. No excessive silly marketing. No miracle cure promises. Just great tea.
In short, we won’t sell any tea that we wouldn’t drink ourselves. We hope you enjoy our selections.
— Anthony & Rachel Verbrick”
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