Matcha Cafe in Spitalfields: JENKI's Brushfield Street Bar

JENKI's Spitalfields bar at 43 Brushfield Street, London E1 6AA, starts whisking at 8am on weekdays, which makes it one of the few serious matcha cafes in the City fringe that is open before your first meeting. The in-store menu linked from its Spitalfields page is short and priced plainly: a Matchacano is £4, the Flat Green £4.50 and a matcha latte £5, all made with ceremonial grade matcha from Uji. Anyone searching for a matcha cafe near me around Liverpool Street should start here, at the brand's self-described flagship.

Liverpool Street station, which serves the Central, Circle, Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan lines plus the Elizabeth line and Overground, is about 300 metres away. Walk east along Brushfield Street and the bar sits on the stretch that runs alongside Old Spitalfields Market, with the white spire of Christ Church Spitalfields closing the view at the far end. Coming from Shoreditch High Street station, it is a short walk south through Commercial Street, and the market's covered halls make it easy to find in the rain.

JENKI is a matcha company first and a cafe second. Every drink is whisked fresh to order rather than pumped from a pre-mixed jug, and the house matcha and hojicha are sourced from Japan, with the matcha coming from Uji near Kyoto. The menu prints calorie counts beside each drink, which tells you who the regulars are: office workers and gym goers who treat a Flat Green as a morning ritual. The Flat Green is even a registered trademark on the menu board, a sign of how central it is.

Start with the classics column. The Matchacano at £4 is matcha and water, the purest way to taste the leaf, and it carries only a couple of calories. The Flat Green at £4.50 is a small, strong milk drink in the spirit of a flat white. The matcha latte is £5, the chai matcha latte £6, and the hojicha latte £4.50, while the chai hojicha latte costs £5.50. Oat, almond, coconut and dairy milk are all listed as standard choices, and any drink can be served hot or iced.

If you find the standard serve too gentle, the Extra Rich Matcha upgrade costs £1.50 and gives you a stronger dose of the house matcha. That is the single best modification on the board, and it turns the £5 latte into something closer to what you would be served in Kyoto. Flavour shots such as vanilla, maple, chai, rose or lavender cost £1 each, and a functional boost of CBD, collagen or protein adds £2.

The JENKI Signatures are all £6.50: the Vanilla and Sea Salt matcha or hojicha latte, the JENKI London Fog matcha latte, the Lavender and CBD matcha latte and the Rose and Collagen matcha latte. The autumn board adds a Spiced Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Cold Foam at £7, a Banana and Pecan Crunch at £7 and a Ginger and Honey drink at £6.50, each available with matcha or hojicha. Be warned that sweet signatures divide opinion: a student reviewer at the brand's Selfridges bar called the Vanilla and Sea Salt latte overwhelmingly salty.

Our honest recommendation is to skip the sweetened signatures on your first visit and order a Flat Green with Extra Rich Matcha for £6. You will taste what the bar is really about, and if you like it, the London Fog is the next step up. Save the seasonal cold foam for a second trip, when you already know how the base matcha tastes on its own.

The bakes are built to go with the drinks. A matcha cinnamon bun costs £4, the hojicha chocolate and sea salt brownie £3.90, and the matcha nut and seed bar £3.80. The smoothies are £8.50 each, including Greens and Matcha with banana, spinach, pineapple, mango and coconut milk. Matcha soft serve, made with Jersey dairy and JENKI matcha, costs £6, and an extra matcha shot on top adds 50p. If you only have room for one sweet thing, the soft serve shows off the matcha better than any of the bakes.

Opening hours are 8am to 7pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm on Saturday, and 9am to 6pm on Sundays and bank holidays. Because the bar sits between the Liverpool Street offices and the market, the pressure points are the weekday commute and weekend lunchtime, when market shoppers join the line. Mid-morning on a weekday or the last hour before closing are the calmer times to come. Ordering is at the counter, and the JENKI app collects loyalty stamps and offers 10% off for students and NHS staff who sign up with their work email.

If the line is out the door and you have a train to catch, walk ten minutes east to Katsute 100 at 147 Brick Lane, London E1 6SB, a Japanese tea room that opens daily from 11am to 8pm and suits a slower pot of tea. JENKI also runs bars at 100 Berwick Street in Soho and at 50a Long Acre in Covent Garden, so if you are heading west for the evening, the same Flat Green is waiting at the other end.

When it opened, the bar was designed by New York designer Ruby Kean, with original Japanese seating, bespoke geometric shelving and a green and blue palette that still defines the brand. It is a compact room, closer to a counter bar than a lounge. With so little seating, most people order to take away and carry their cups into the market halls, so the room turns over quickly even when it looks full from the street.

Claudia and Otto Boyer founded JENKI in 2020 after finding that good matcha was surprisingly hard to buy in London. The pair travelled to Japan to meet growers and tea experts, then started with a market stall, spending weekends whisking matcha for people who had never tried it. In 2021 they opened their first bar here in Spitalfields; press at the time reported a July 2021 opening. The company now runs bars across London, from Battersea Power Station to Borough Market, but this is still the one it calls the flagship.

Take your cup into Old Spitalfields Market at 16 Horner Square, E1 6EW, which opens 10am to 8pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays and 8am to 6pm on Thursdays. Then walk north to 18 Folgate Street, where Dennis Severs' House offers candlelit tours of a recreated Huguenot silk weaver's home, with tickets on sale for dates from 20 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. Finish by circling back past Christ Church Spitalfields and down Fournier Street to admire the Georgian houses.

The bar does not publish a phone number; the brand's contact email is info@jenki.co.uk. Payment is at the counter, and the counter menu is cheaper than ordering the same drinks through delivery apps, and the app's loyalty stamps are the easiest way to save on a daily habit. The menu's personalisation section lists every add-on price clearly, so there are no surprises at the till. Any house classic is free when you buy a pouch or tin of JENKI matcha to take home, so if you were planning to buy matcha for home anyway, buy it at the counter and drink your latte for free.

This bar is perfect for commuters swapping coffee for matcha, for anyone training or working nearby who wants a quick, strong drink before 9am, and for market visitors who want a soft serve with real tea flavour. It is less suited to people looking for a long, quiet sit with a pot of loose leaf tea, which is what Brick Lane's tea room is for. Order the Flat Green with Extra Rich Matcha, stand at the window, and watch the market wake up.