If you love matcha, Boston’s new dessert shop Mizu Matcha will surely pique your interest.

Mizu Matcha opened on Newbury Street in December 2025, quickly seizing the attention of influencers and locals alike. Marketed as a modern cafe reinventing tea traditions with contemporary flair, Mizu promises to provide “a sanctuary for clean, high-performance nourishment,” served through its specialty drinks, parfaits, and ice cream.

With an ambitious menu, Mizu Matcha is a stop for both quick sweet treats and an expansive dessert adventure. Customers can opt for a simple gelato — with one scoop going for $6.49 — or construct a parfait deluxe complete with add-ons like warabimochi, nama chocolate, red bean, and mochi balls, priced starting from $14.49. Their simple matcha latte is watery and underwhelming; the elaborate specialty drinks — latte frappes, azuki lattes, and floats — stray far from the “healthy alternatives for the modern lifestyle” they advertise, masquerading more as dessert milkshakes. For a store that foregrounds itself as authentically Japanese, the heavy tilt toward Westernized, dessert-forward interpretations — which is often miles away from true tea — is ironic.

However, Mizu Matcha succeeds in delivering a delicious matcha ice cream. The ice cream opens with an intensely creamy flavor before introducing the fresh, earthy matcha profile. The texture is silky smooth, dense, and seemingly made in the fashion of European gelato, with hints of sweetness that remind one of white chocolate or steamed milk. When bitter notes pop through, it does so in a manner similar to well-brewed tea — gently and followed by a sweeter afternote. The pungency of the matcha flavor is delightful. Mizu Matcha’s ice cream tastes evidently of a dessert made from ceremonial-grade matcha powder as opposed to sugar-entrenched green food coloring.

With five levels of matcha — although the highest level is inedibly sour and astringent — Mizu Matcha encourages guests to customize the intensities of their ice cream. At the front of the store, the ice cream is ordered in a beautiful gradient, from a faint spring green to an intense forest green. Realistically, though, level three matcha intensity appears to be the most commonly ordered selection — as evident from the oft-empty ice cream tub. Unless particularly adventurous, stay away from the extremes in this scale; the bitterness of the higher levels resemble medicine in taste rather than dessert. To satisfy a sweet tooth, one should not feel guilty for choosing a lower intensity.

For patrons who may tire of matcha, Mizu Matcha also offers other Asian-inspired flavors in all of their desserts: hojicha, black sesame, and taro. These flavors are offered as substitutes for matcha and, as such, feel secondary to the store’s matcha identity. However, the hojicha ice cream is delicious — creamy, warm, nutty, hints of roasted tea and a sweetness around level two matcha. It could use more strength, though, perhaps in the form of an equivalent five-level scale where one can customize the desired intensity.

Mizu Matcha is open daily from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. Bustling with customers, Mizu Matcha is located in the heart of one of Boston’s busiest streets. With a bright, fluorescent interior, the store is cramped and offers limited indoor seating, just a single row of wooden tables. Customers funnel in through a small doorway, order at kiosks, take their treat outside to enjoy, and swoop back in to drop their trash in a constantly overflowing bin. If one is hoping for a store to sit down, savor an ice cream, and truly relax, Mizu Matcha does not offer this luxury.

As for now, Mizu Matcha feels caught between two ambitions: to be an authentic, tea-focused dessert parlor and a high-volume Instagrammable spot. At present, it clearly leans to the latter. What one can hope for in Mizu Matcha is simply more of its self-proclaimed goal to create an inviting atmosphere where one can “enjoy a moment of Zen.” As of now, in the name of efficiency, Mizu Matcha offers ordering on two kiosks, creating a fast-paced, drive-thru experience rather than a temporary respite from the outside world. Although the ice cream is delicious, the broader experience undercuts the brand’s promise of refinement.

As the novelty of the store fades away, one can only hope that Mizu Matcha refocuses on the wider promise of matcha itself — to be calm, peaceful, and balanced. Amid the restlessness of Newbury Street, there is clearly a need for a place that lives up to this.

—Staff Writer Cloris F. Shi can be reached at [email protected].