Suite 166 at the Park Pavilion Center in Plano (off Coit Road and Park Boulevard) has weathered several reincarnations over the past couple of years.
Since the commercial plaza grew into the bustling micro-Asiatown it is today, the small storefront went from being a Snowflake Cafe — where the freezer-burned rolled ice cream fad made a dull impression on passersby — to C Fruit Life, a dessert and snack cafe that just couldn’t cut it against the veteran status of nearby Kung Fu Tea or the glitzy neon allure of the Sweet Hut bakery.
Here’s hoping that third time’s a charm with Meccha Matcha.
This Japanese-inspired tea and dessert house dishes everything from soft serve and smoothies to lattes and shaved ice. And at the core of it all is its namesake: matcha, finely ground green tea powder that’s infused into almost every sweet treat on the menu. "Meccha,” pronounced met-cha, is Japanese slang for “very,” “extremely” or “super,” and the cafe is making an earnest effort to live up to the name — as a quality matcha heavyweight in an area with a growing Japanese food scene.
There’s already plenty in the North Texas matcha-verse, including Matcha Love inside the Mitsuwa Marketplace in Plano, Sweet Lab and I·CE·NY Dallas in Carrollton, Pok the Raw Bar in West Village, Local Press and Brew in Oak Cliff and Niwa Japanese BBQ in Deep Ellum. But Meccha Matcha is a welcome addition to Plano, where the Asian food scene has been booming lately, and there is no shortage of teens and young 20-somethings in search of a new watering hole.
According to its Facebook page, Meccha Matcha only uses the best premium matcha straight from Uji, Japan, in the Kyoto prefecture.
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But if matcha isn’t your cup of tea, Meccha’s got you covered, too. You can substitute hojicha floats, lattes and smoothies instead. Hojicha is distinct from traditionally steamed green teas primarily because it’s roasted over charcoal. That preparation gives hojicha an earthier, nutty aroma. Some even say the flavor skews closer to coffee. There are also strawberry, red bean and black sesame desserts and beverages. And if your sweet tooth is really tingling, try the matcha parfait, an eight-ingredient tower of matcha soft serve, matcha jelly, matcha chocolate, mochi balls, strawberry sauce, red beans, granola and whipped cream.
The quaint cafe — bright, airy and adorned in Japanese bamboo wall treatments and hanging Japanese parasols — is a lovely place to hunker down with friends or with a book. Sip on a slightly sweetened matcha latte and send kind and gracious thoughts into the universe that this new joint doesn’t suffer the fate of its predecessors.
Meccha Matcha, 2001 Coit Road, Plano
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