Opinion: Matcha Mania is a Sign of the Times
Plus, Black Radish Creamery medals at the American Cheese Society's annual conference and more local food news.
Opinion: Matcha Mania is a Sign of the Times
By Andy Dehus
Food and drink have gone all in on visuals.
While you can’t enjoy the flavor of a dish or beverage through its depiction on a screen, you can become enamored with its appearance. It naturally follows that the more appealing a preparation looks in an Instagram feed, the more likely the viewer is to clamor to try it. This incentivizes kitchens with the greatest social media-driven ambitions (i.e. almost every new opening and many others) to prioritize the photographic impact of their preparations over other competing concerns.
Furthermore, it’s coming to light that the image on the screen has to make a big impression quickly, lest it succumb to the scroll. Subtlety will not be rewarded, but bright, edgy colors will. In a New York Times article titled “A Must For The Next Food Craze? Be ‘Social Media Gorgeous’ ,” flavor expert Mark Webster notes, “One of our criteria for new flavors is that the color [my emphasis] has to be social-media gorgeous, something that influencers gravitate to.”
All of this is a lot of windup to make a series of points with some local relevance:
Matcha is, all of the sudden, all over Central Ohio. Matcha’s ubiquity is driven by its striking shade of jade green that positively leaps from the screen. It’s a hue that’s shot around the world at the speed of electrons, not unlike the lurid purple of ube that the aforementioned NYT article was highlighting back in April of this year.
Ube is so last month, and matcha is right now. The king is dead, long live the king (ha).
Have you actually ever tried matcha? Real matcha? The kind that Art of Tea, a reputable tea vendor who is unambiguously trying to sell you some, describes as tasting like seaweed, spinach or vegetable broth? The kind that, in my experiences in Japan, tasted more like freshly cut grass smells?
Most consumers haven’t tried it, and probably won’t, because almost nobody locally is selling matcha as a straightforward uncut preparation. At minimum, it’s being heavily diluted with milk in a latte, and more commonly it’s merely the headline ingredient in an elaborately flavor-bombed concoction designed to mask matcha’s inherently challenging taste.
Ube, for all of its visually driven appeal, at least has the added advantage of being a flavor that naturally plays well with the ingredients typically found in your average cafe’s toolkit.
The term “micro trend” has been used to describe social media-driven consumer enthusiasms that disappear as quickly as they arrive, and I expect that matcha is poised to be a textbook example.
You may have read all of this (and thanks for sticking with me) and still think, “So what? Seems harmless enough. It’s just a drink!” To which, I offer three thoughts:
When even a flavor expert emphasizes the importance of color over flavor, it seems reasonable to point out that this compromise is now part of the deal when encountering visually driven micro trend products. Matcha seems particularly egregious on this front, especially when promoted in a way that gives no hint as to what it tastes like or how much effort has been put into neutralizing its natural flavor traits.
Food or drink producers need to weigh the shelf life of micro trends against the cost of including the next-big-thing on their menu—or basing their entire business on this trend.
On the other hand, if your teenage children think you’re as lame as mine does, then maybe a matcha-frappe-latte-ccino in a clear cup, casually choked down in front of them like you were born into it, may buy you some zoomer cred.
On all counts, pick your poison!
News
Around the Columbus Food & Drink Scene
For the first time ever, Central Ohio’s own Black Radish Creamery medaled at the American Cheese Society Judging & Competition, which took place last week in Louisville. Black Radish took home bronze medals for both its Bandit Red Cheddar and Bankston cheeses.
The bakery Love Riley will celebrate the grand opening of its new Grandview shop on Saturday, July 18. The first 100 guests will receive free slices of cake. The new bakeshop is located at 1089 W. First Ave., formerly home to The Butcher & Grocer. Love Riley specializes in custom cakes but also sells cupcakes, macarons, brownies, iced cookies and more from its baking case. Love Riley’s original shop remains open at 14 Dillmont Drive in Lewis Center.
Columbus Food Adventures’ July Supper Club will feature chef Justin Wotring, founder of Caroline’s Sandwiches in the North Market. One of the city’s most exciting young chefs, Wotring will lean on his experience in French, Italian and other world cuisines for this six-course dinner taking place at 6 p.m. on July 23 at The Parker House, a one-of-a-kind wooded property in Gahanna. Get your tickets here.
Budd Dairy Food Hall (1086 N. Fourth St.) is hosting a rooftop tiki party, dubbed the Lei’d Back Tiki Beach Bash, from 6-9 p.m. on Friday, July 24. The ticketed event will feature tiki cocktails, island-inspired bites and a live DJ. Get your tickets here.
The color of a specialty matcha drink is certainly cat nip for social media. That bright green with a milky white cream swirling down the sides? Mesmerizing. But I agree that many local places aren’t serving up anything that tastes much like matcha.
I’m one of those weirdos that actually likes the flavor of matcha. I make it at home, sourced from Japan, sometimes as a latte but sometimes iced with nothing but water and a simple syrup. I can see how the taste isn’t for everyone, but I think you could say the same about coffee. The taste of coffee is also challenging on its own for many people, which is why it’s very often served with milk, cream, sugar, caramel, chocolate, etc.
And there are some local spots that have a matcha that actually tastes like matcha! Matcha Me, which you mentioned, is very good, and you can do a matcha water that lets the flavor of the green stuff shine. I like it iced and unsweetened, but then topped with the einspanner cream. And Cha Redefine has a Matcha Matcha that I wish wasn’t as good as it is or as close to my house, because it’s far too temping to grab an $8 drink a few times a week. I really didn’t mean for this comment to be so long. You drew out the matcha enthusiast in me, I suppose!
Leading the way on the matcha trend, Alchemy in Grandview has been wowing me with their Pistachio Matcha Latte for a few years now.