Tadaima Matcha Tea House: Five Cream Lattes and a $16 Sando

Tadaima, at 3515 20th Street between Mission and Valencia, takes no reservations and works as a counter: you order, wait for your name, and usually carry the bag out. As a matcha tea house in the Mission it is built around iced cream-topped lattes, from the $6.75 plain iced matcha to a $7.75 strawberry cream version, served beside Japanese sandos that turn a drink stop into lunch.

The drink board reads like a single idea worked five ways. The base Matcha Latte costs $6.25 hot or $6.75 iced. Iced versions then take a cream cap: Strawberry Cream at $7.75, Pistachio Cream at $7.75, Salted Cheese Cream at $7.50, and a Dirty Matcha Cream Latte at $7.75 that adds espresso and comes with fixed sweetness. Oat or almond milk adds $0.75 to any of them.

First-timers who want to taste the tea should order the plain iced latte and steal a sip of a friend's strawberry. The pink layer is thick and fruity, and once stirred it softens the matcha's bitterness considerably. Salted cheese cream does the opposite job, giving a savory edge that keeps the tea flavor upfront. The dirty version is the one to skip if green tea is the reason you came.

Non-matcha drinkers are not stranded. The Hojicha Latte is $6.00 hot or $6.50 iced, and the menu credits that roasted tea to Matchaful. A Jasmine Tea with Matcha Cream runs $7.00, and the Black Sesame Cream Latte, at $5.50 hot or $6.00 iced, is caffeine-free. Espresso drinks use La Colombe coffee, which makes Tadaima a workable stop for a mixed group heading to the park.

Mission Local reported in 2024 that the Chicken Filet Karage sando, $16 on the current menu, was the top seller at roughly 140 a day. It is a deep-fried chicken filet with lettuce and house sauce on soft white bread. The Tonkatsu with Pineapple costs $17, while Fish Katsu with Shiso and Shrimp Tempura are $18 each. A Potato and Egg Salad sando at $14 is the lighter savory choice.

Sweet sandos lean on the same cream. Strawberry and Cream is $12, the Mixed Fruit sando is $14 with fruit that changes weekly, and the Mission menu adds a Red Bean, Mochi and Matcha Cream sando at $13. Order that last one only if someone at the table is skipping a cream latte; two matcha creams in one sitting blur together, and the mochi is chewy and dense.

Rice is the cheaper route. Spam and Egg musubi starts at $6.00, and the Unagi, Avocado, Spam and Egg version tops the list at $8.50. Onigiri run from $3.50 for mushroom with pickled daikon to $6.00 for yuzu salmon, sold one piece per order with a two-order minimum. Two onigiri and an iced matcha make a solid lunch for under $17 before tax.

Tadaima soft-opened on July 31, 2024, and the SF Standard reported 180 tickets that first day against an expected 40. Janet Lee opened it with partners Master Lo, Perry You and Ivan Yu, who met working at a Japantown sushi restaurant. The space came bundled with the lease for Okaeri, their bistro next door, and Lee first considered a sake bar before settling on sandwiches.

The names are a pair. Tadaima means I'm home in Japanese, the phrase called out when walking in the door, and Okaeri is the welcome-home reply. Since then the counter has grown: Hoodline reported in July 2026 that Tadaima runs locations in the Mission, Inner Sunset and Marina and was opening a fourth in the Financial District. The 20th Street shop is the original.

Official hours at the Mission shop are Monday through Thursday 11 am to 4:30 pm and Friday through Sunday 10 am to 5:30 pm. There is no dinner service, so a late lunch has to land before the afternoon close. Weekend mornings at 10 am are the quietest start, since the weekday crowd arrives with the 11 am opening and the noon office break.

In the opening weeks diners waited 10 to 15 minutes to order and about 10 more for food, with the line running past the green bench outside. If that queue is back, order pickup through the Toast link on tadaimasf.com and walk in only to collect. Delivery runs through DoorDash, though cream lattes travel badly; the cap slumps and the ice melts into the tea within minutes.

Inside, the room is small and the counter does most of the work. Keep bags off the few seats, let the pickup shelf breathe, and unwrap sandos over their paper because the house sauce runs. Groups larger than four should split up: one person orders while the others wait outside. If the line still blocks the sidewalk, Stonemill Matcha on Valencia Street is a few blocks away.

Leaving with an iced latte, head west on 20th Street to Valencia, then up toward Mission Dolores Park, whose sloping lawns overlook downtown. It is roughly a ten-minute walk and the right place to unwrap a karaage sando on a sunny afternoon. Bring the onigiri if you plan to linger, since they hold up better than a sando in the wind that crosses the park's upper slopes.

Valencia Street between 18th and 22nd is lined with bookstores, vintage shops and murals, so a loop back down Valencia toward 22nd Street fills an hour. The 16th Street Mission and 24th Street Mission BART stations sit at either end, both about a ten-minute walk from Tadaima. Muni's 14 and 49 buses run along Mission Street one block east.

Tadaima Mission: 3515 20th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. Hours: Monday to Thursday 11 am to 4:30 pm, Friday to Sunday 10 am to 5:30 pm. Ordering is at the counter or online for pickup; no reservations. Prices quoted are from the drink and food menus on tadaimasf.com in October 2026. Use the Karpo APP to plan a park route after lunch.