Manchester’s Chinatown has seen a bit of a resurgence recently, what with the addition of fantastic Vietnamese street food joint Pho Cue, sneaker emporium Sneaker63 and now this – a new dedicated matcha tea and dessert house – TSUJIRI.
Located up some steps on Faulkner Street, it’s quite easy to miss, but once you’re up the steps – well, you’re in for a real treat. They serve up an impressive menu of MATCHA delights including Japanese tea, Bubble tea, ice blends and shakes, lattes, floats, Japanese sweets, puddings and ice creams. So, a lot then.
Everything is matcha-based although there are a few little bits here and there that don’t use it. We went full out when visiting though, opting for a Matcha Ice Blend (£4.90) and the excellent TSUJIRI Sundae; a blend of matcha ice cream, red beans and mochi balls drizzled with kuromitsu – a delectable Japanese sugar syrup that is a bit like treacle but not as strong. It was MEGA!
They’ve recently moved up to Manchester from London, where they’ve got two tea houses in Soho and Chinatown down there. Director of TSUJIRI, Chin Teow, took a big risk when opening up the first branch, someone who grew up in a fishball factory in Kuala Lumpur, he found it difficult to break into the insular world of Japanese tea.
But after a 2016 trip to Japan where he tasted ‘real’ matcha at the 160-year-old tea cafe Tsujiri, he moved to London with the determination to set up a TSUJIRI franchise.
It paid off, with queues around the block in the first six months at the Soho branch and a quick expansion into Chinatown. The matcha revolution looks set to continue up here in Manchester, and I think they’ll prove to be extremely popular indeed.
…………………………
TSUJIRI Matcha House, Ground Floor, Upper, 50 Faulkner St, Manchester M1 4FH
tsujiri.co.uk
