Matcha Workshop At Rice Market DC

Last week I attended a matcha workshop at Rice Market DC. Rice Market offers classes as well a restaurant and grocery store! I love this location for purchasing ingredients for asian style recipes as well as their prepared foods. I’ve always wanted to take a class as well, they offer a variety of classes from cooking to tasting. I was excited that they were offering a matcha workshop with Miro Tea which is a tea brand I’ve connected with on social media and met at the Northwest Tea Festival when I was a vendor a few years ago.

While I do know how to prepare matcha, I wanted to take this workshop to have more formalized instruction and also just to do something fun! Jeannie led this workshop and shared about the history of matcha and the matcha industry. We were able to prepare and taste 4 of their matchas. We were also given 2 delicious cookies to enjoy as well.

Growing up, tea was always more of something I did while connecting with others. As my blog and shop grew, tea became more of an individual activity for me to experiment, reflect and enjoy. This workshop gave me an opportunity to taste matcha with others which was really nice. Afterwards I also got some delicious drinks from Rice Market, including a japanese sour plum highball!

Generally speaking my tea habits at home include persian black tea in the morning and then in the afternoon I’m usually drinking a tea from my collection. This collection consists mostly of oolongs but I also enjoy hojicha, white tea and pu’er on occasion as well. I don’t generally prepare matcha for myself at home. Since matcha is one of the only teas you can find at cafes, I usually leave my matcha consumption for when I go to a cafe. The downside of this is that most cafes only prepare matcha lattes. I do enjoy them but I also enjoy matcha without any milk.

This workshop allowed me to whisk 4 bowls of matcha for myself and to taste them on their own. I’ll be going to Japan in November where I hope to do some tea related activities as well so this was a nice reintroduction to Japanese tea. We tasted 3 of Miro’s ceremonial matchas as well as their ginger matcha. My favorite was the Homare matcha because it had a lovely umame flavor with a hint of sweetness. It felt more like a savory broth which I enjoy. I also thought the ginger matcha was very interesting, it was a flavor bomb with the spicy ginger added into it. I could definitely see myself enjoying that when I feel a cold starting to set in.

I think the space Rice Market provides for their classes was so cozy. It looks like an actual living space so it feels very much like we are all gathered in someone’s kitchen getting an intimate lesson on food/beverage. I look forward to taking another class here!