Written by Louis Nguyen | July 25, 2024
I am making the bold claim that Honeybird had the best matcha on campus. As a matcha purist, I need to taste the tea leaves, the earth from which they grew, and the worms whom made a home underground by the roots. A good matcha must be upfront and earnest. Her flavors must not be concealed by pretense and dilution. The Matcha Mojito Soda, a niche drink introduced in January of 2024 at the now-closed okay-tasting fried chicken chain, scratched that itch for me like no other at USC. I want to dedicate this paragraph as a moment of silence for this enlightening beverage – explosively earthy, bold and refreshing. The reasonable $6 price tag made the clarity it afforded every single tea atom that much more impressive. But now, the utopia I felt sipping on this green magic has been crushed, and I am left hunting for the second best.
Fortunately, USC is no matcha desert. Many options are available, and after an arduous adventure sampling all the options in my realm of knowledge, I have compiled a tier list below. If I’m missing anything, please let me know.
C Tier: Sugar and Disappointment – Starbucks, Coffee Bean
If you genuinely frequent either of these establishments for their matcha, I have very little to say to you. A little birdy told me that they harvested the tea leaves for these two chains from the garden of Shein. The lattes here taste like a parody of matcha: imagine melting down half a green tea KitKat and diluting it even more with milk and sugar. I tried to be classy one time and asked the Starbucks barista if I can adjust the sweetness of my matcha, and after a spine-chilling moment of silence, they said “our matcha powder is already mixed in with sugar.” This blasphemous statement shook me to my core. The Coffee Bean’s matcha drink is no less questionable. In addition to a similarly pre-mixed concoction of green sugar, they also offer several fruit syrups to flavor your matcha. All I could think of was: they want to distract the sugar… with more sugar… it’s kinda campy… In a sense, the matcha lattes from these chains belong to the category of hilariously American things that I can’t help but marvel at, like blooming onions, county fairs, and Intercollegiate Viet Student Association Pageants.
B Tier: Opulent Sassy Milk – Dulce, Ministry of Coffee
If you genuinely frequent either of these establishments for their matcha, I have so much to say to you. Because you’re rich and easily manipulated. You fall for ambiance. You just wanna hold a pretty drink in a very public place – you’re serving a look and love to be perceived. Why the heck else would you stand in line for twenty minutes in the sun at Dulce or walk ten miles to the Ministry of Coffee? Why the heck else would you do all that AND pay ten to twelve dollars (45 minutes of work at my student job) for a green drink that tastes like NOTHING? It tastes like whatever milk you choose to go with your latte, and you might be able to sense a sassy little after taste of the two matcha molecules they decide to so charitably give you. If we’re talking Dulce, I’m referring strictly to the fancy unsweetened matcha that you have to specifically ask for. If you get the regular matcha latte, or the blueberry matcha latte, you might as well walk to Coffee Bean and get the exact same drink for half the price. I sound annoyed because I am, but I also want to clarify that these drinks are fine. I don’t hate them. They do their job adequately. I just think they offer a horrible return on investment.
A Tier: Upfront and Earnest – The Second Best Matcha – Dunkin’ Donuts
After my rant on pre-mixing sugar with matcha, you wouldn’t expect me to rank Dunkin’ so high didn’t you? Me neither. But after much deliberation, I came to the conclusion that Dunkin’ matcha offers the perfect combination of passable taste and amazing return on investment. It’s not as offensively sugary as Starbucks and Coffee Bean, and for $6 (tax included), you can get a matcha cup so hilariously large that it’s almost a fashion statement. Don’t get me wrong, Dunkin’ matcha is trashy. But does it hide that? NO! It’s upfront and earnest. You pay for what you get. You can taste the earth and the worms in this matcha in the same way you can taste the fruits in LaCroix. And that’s just enough. The caffeine will get you running all day, and the tea leaves here give Urban Outfitters instead of Shein (HoneyBird was Heaven by Marc Jacobs, and Dulce is Jaded London – go figure).
It is a little sad that Dunkin’, out of everything, is now the best matcha at USC. As many options as USC offers, it’s sad that nothing ever reached the heights of the short-lived HoneyBird Matcha Mojito Soda. Something needs to be done about this. We can’t settle. I’m certainly not. After HoneyBird closed, I drove to Marukai, got my own matcha, rolled up my sleeves and got to work… But for the girls with less drive and more budget, here are my LA Matcha recs (I’m an East Side devotee, keep that in mind). If you’re a freak like me and want to taste the Earth and the Worms via a matcha tonic, I’d highly recommend 3Thyme in KTown or Kumquat in DTLA / Eagle Rock. If you want to stick to the perfectly reliable matcha latte, Tea Master and Midori Matcha in Little Tokyo are my go-tos. If you want to serve a look, be perceived, and stand in line in the sun for twenty minutes, a Dulce alternative with better matcha and more mullets, mustaches, and little tattoos is Maru in Los Feliz.