Strawberry
$6.80Cold-pressed berries, folded through at the base.
TAKE — Matcha Bar & Slow Coffee identity by Bin Zubair
Strawberry
Ceremonial matcha · Oat milk · Strawberry
Ripe strawberry. Bitter green tea. A soft, creamy hue of a finish.
Served iced · $6.80
Ninety seconds. That's the whole ceremony.
Bamboo grows a metre a day and still never looks like it's trying. That is the entire brief, and the reason the mark is built from three quiet strokes instead of a logo that shouts.
Ceremonial grade, stone-ground in Uji at 30g an hour, because grinding it faster burns it. Whisked in a warm bowl. Poured over cold oat. No syrups, no powders, no shortcuts.
01
Sift
Through fine mesh, twice. Matcha clumps or it doesn't dissolve.
02
Whisk
80°C, never boiling. Bamboo chasen, W-motion, thirty seconds.
03
Pour
Over cold oat and fruit. The layers separate themselves.
How it started
A bar that happens to pour matcha.
TAKE opened as eight stools at one counter on Gertrude Street, a block from three places already selling matcha as a wellness shot you drink standing up.
So it went the other way. You sit. It is whisked in front of you, and there is nowhere to plug in a laptop. Two rooms now, still one bowl at a time: a drink that takes ninety seconds to make, in a room people stay in for an hour.
Four flavours, one method
Shaken, never
hurried.
The first harvest, or nothing.
Shaded twenty days before picking, which starves the leaf of light and floods it with theanine. First flush only — the youngest leaves from the top of the plant. Everything below that is culinary grade, and culinary grade is for baking.
Twenty days in shade. First flush only. Thirty grams an hour. Nothing added.
In the café
Where the leaf slows down.
Open 7am. Forty seats. Two doors down from the tram stop.
The system
Deep green reads as health food. Ember makes it a brand.
Six colours, and five of them stay out of the way. Ember appears on about one percent of any surface — a rule, a price, the bar on the can — and that restraint is the whole reason it lands.
Slow down. Drink.
Two rooms, forty seats, one flat-top for the toasties. Come before eleven and you'll get a window.
Find usWhere
114 Gertrude Street
Fitzroy, Melbourne
Hours
Mon – Fri 7:00 – 16:00
Sat – Sun 8:00 – 17:00
UnhurriedRootedWarmDirectGroundedAliveTactilePrecise