Matchai Store

Matchai Store does one thing: matcha, the powdered green leaf from Japan, poured as drinks at the counter and sold as powder to take away. It sits in the middle…Matchai Store does one thing: matcha, the powdered green leaf from Japan, poured as drinks at the counter and sold as powder to take away. It sits in the middle of Tirana opposite the police headquarters, which is the landmark locals use for it.

The leaf is from the spring picking, the earliest and most prized, and the shop packages starter sets with a thirty-gram tin and the tools to prepare it at home. In a city whose cafe culture is built almost entirely on the Italian espresso tradition, a counter given over to an East Asian product is a genuine oddity and, for the moment, the only one of its kind in the country.