The two minute review: OMMA Matcha Café

What should we know about OMMA?

It's a Japan-inspired tea brand founded by Ukranian in Ireland Nastya Kharytonova, who was asked by Brown Thomas to set up a pop up matcha café in a corner of Planet Beauty on Clarendon Street for a couple of months. The team discovered her matcha at other Dublin cafés, and thought there was a green gap in the market, so they moved some beauty products out, and Nastya's tea in. Go her.

Kharytonova is a matcha obsessive, using ceremonial grade tea for matcha ceremonies, workshops and café collaborations, and you may have already come across OMMA in 3fe, Hatch, Indigo & Cloth among others. She's a frequent visitor to Japan and spent months living with a Japanese tea family to master its cultivation and preparation, training under experienced tea masters.

OMMA started in 2021 when Nastya, burnt out, anxious and fatigued by Covid and digital overload, wanted to start a daily ritual to improve her mood. What started as an act of self-care has turned into a mission to showcase Ukrainian talent, with Nastya's boyfriend and friends involved with creating textiles, illustrating graphics, designing the pop up space, and one coming all the way from Kyiv to create matcha desserts.

Their slogan is 'Me time – tea time', and they say they want people to reconnect with themselves through Japanese tea culture, engaging all five senses in a tea ritual they promise brings presence, relaxation, and self-discovery. Sounds idyllic.

What's on the menu?

Hot and cold matcha and hojicha (roasted green tea) drinks, and sweets from Ukranian bakery Kasu Teira (whose founder Dasha flew to Dublin to make a big batch of goodies that they blast froze), as well as Japanese bakery Gopan, and Dublin micro-bakery Offcuts. Bear in mind that there's a whole tea ceremony process, so don't expect to dive in and out. Patience is key.

Matcha is definitely an acquired taste (we're still in the process of acquiring it), and if you've never had the green, grassy drink before we'd probably start with a citrus blend, or an iced latté, before diving into a hot one. There's also the roasted tea option of hojicha, with more toasty, chocolatey flavours - perfect for matcha beginners.

The sweet menu here makes OMMA worth the trip, even if you're not mad for matcha. You must try the zingy, creamy, Q-textured yuzu mascarpone mochi from Gopan (€4), sprinkled with raspberry powder to make it even more extra, and the matcha truffle (€4.50) and green tea brownies (€6) from Kasu Teira taste too good to have added health benefits. They're promising Japanese fruit sandos and yuzu buns too but they weren't there on our visit.

Why should we go?

Matcha lovers are already racing to OMMA - there was a queue for the duration we were in there, but matcha newbies can get their first introduction here from a trusted source with a user-friendly menu. Plus, we're all trying to drink less coffee right? At €5.80 a latté and €6.30 a spritz, this is more of a treat than a multiple times a day occurrence like our trusty flat white, but when have we ever denied ourselves a lil treat.