Why is every single café in Dhaka selling TK 600 lawn milk?
From green brownies to "matcha clouds" dumped on perfectly fine iced coffee, Dhaka’s café scene is officially drowning in green paste. Half the hype happens on an Instagram feed first and in a cup second.
Congratulations, Dhaka. We did it. We have found a way to turn every café menu in this city the same shade of pond.
I remember when matcha was a polite little guest. It sat on the menu between the cappuccino and the hot chocolate, minding its own business. It was green, it cost more than my lunch, and I ignored it. We had an arrangement. Then matcha looked at the arrangement, laughed, and moved into every café and bakery in town.
Last week, I counted the green items on one café board. I stopped at 11, mostly out of grief. Matcha latte. Iced matcha latte. Strawberry matcha, for people who like their grass fruity. Oat-milk matcha, for people who want their grass plant-based, which it already was.
Then came the crown jewel: the "matcha cloud," an iced coffee with matcha cold foam dumped on top. Somebody looked at a perfectly good iced coffee and thought, "You know what this needs? A lawn." Genius, truly. Give that person a business award, and then keep them well away from my coffee.
Fine, I can live with the drinks. Drink your green milk; I do not care. The desserts, though, have gone too far. Matcha tiramisu. Matcha cheesecake. Matcha cinnamon rolls. A croissant, something the French spent centuries perfecting, sliced open and filled with green paste like a medical sample. And then the matcha brownie. A green brownie! The colour is in the name, people.
Next, they will sell me a white blackberry and call it innovation. A friend swears she saw matcha rasmalai at a wedding. For my own safety, I have decided she is lying.
Now, my honest review of the flavour, and I say this with love: matcha tastes like paan. Not the good paan. It is paan with nothing done to it, sold back to us at five times the price with a latte-art heart on top.
On a bad day, it tastes like grass after rain. I know this, because I fell face-first into exactly that grass when I was seven. I cried at the time. Apparently, I should have been charged Tk 500 for the experience.
Say any of this to a matcha fan, and they will look at you as though you have insulted their grandmother. "You're drinking the wrong kind," they say. You need ceremonial grade. It is smooth. It is delicate. It has umami, they announce, as if they have ever used that word about anything else. You also need a bamboo whisk, water at precisely the right temperature and, presumably, a quiet mind and a sunrise.
And money. Quite a lot of it.
Which brings me to the price. A matcha latte in this city now costs anywhere between Tk 400 and Tk 650. For that, I can have a paan, a roadside cha, two singaras, and a rickshaw home and still arrive happier than anyone clutching a plastic cup of green foam.
"But it gives you calm energy," they insist. "No coffee jitters."
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Wonderful.
I also have calm energy. It is called a nap after lunch, and it costs nothing.
Let us be honest about why it is really everywhere: it looks gorgeous on Instagram. A pale green layer over white milk, held by a hand with a nice ring, against a brick wall. Half of Dhaka's café scene happens on a phone first and in a chair second. Nobody posts a paan. Tragic, really. Paan has never had a PR team.
Perhaps this will end the way Dalgona coffee and bubble tea did, with a quiet retreat to a few loyal shops. Or maybe, it stays forever, and my grandchildren will eat matcha pitha at Eid. Either way, I will be in the corner with my Americano, watching someone photograph a green croissant from four angles.
Dear cafés: keep one dessert that is not green. One plain chocolate cake. I am begging you.
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