I had a free morning last week and managed to go to Koda Cafe, where I was pleasantly surprised by the range of tea!

I actually went to this cafe for their waffles, but when I saw their tea, I was quite surprised by the range they had. I think the only other cafe (apart from tea-focused places like Hvala), with more tea would be D’Good Cafe in Takashimaya.

Or maybe I haven’t cafe-hopped enough.

I didn’t try any of their blends, but I like that they have samples for you to smell! Smell isn’t the most accurate way of determining taste (I’ve had teas that smelled tooth-decaying-ly sweet but tasted pretty muted) but it’s better than just reading the description on a menu.

In this case, I decided to try one of their single origin teas: the saemidori fukamushi sencha from Kyoto:

First impression: the taste of the tea is fairly muted – there’s a very slight vegetal taste characteristic of Japanese green teas, a slight sweetness, and very little astringency.

Second impression: as the tea cooled down, the flavours grew stronger, especially the vegetal taste. The umami in the tea started to become noticeable too, turning this from a slightly sweet tea into a savoury one that lingered in my mouth. It definitely became a lot more interesting than it was at the start.