Matcha News

Dallas gallery was unlikely host for a how-to class on matcha

Matcha tea is all the buzz right now.

Cristiana Acerbi Ginatta

The insatiable mania for matcha surfaced in Dallas in an unlikely location: an art gallery. On July 13, Dallas coffee and matcha cart The Dang Spot led a class on how to make the buzzy green tea at Dallas Contemporary, the art space at 161 Glass St. in the Dallas Design District.

The class was a two-hour dive into the art of making matcha. For impatient types, the lesson could have been summed up in two words: "stir vigorously." But that would have left out the charming quirks of the event — as well as the zen-like experience of meditating on a topic and reaping unexpected benefits.

The Dang Spot started out as a champion of Vietnamese phin-drip coffee, but founders Vivian Doan & Frank Duong added matcha to the menu in response to intense customer demand. This was their first matcha class, and it had a few bumps, including a late start and some mad-dash trips to the store to fetch ingredients. But the 20 attendees — a full house of beverage fans and general-purpose foodies with an interest in matcha — were happy to go along for the ride.

The class had a singular focus. There was no food, no bottomless mimosas, just a careful instruction on the mechanics of making a drink. The simplicity was part of the charm. And hands-on classes are always fun, creating camaraderie, breaking down social barriers, inviting interaction with people you might not otherwise meet.

Matcha is made from the leaves of a tea plant that has been shaded from the sun; it makes the resulting tea more mellow. The leaves are ground into the pretty green powder that's used for matcha lattes, smoothies, pastries, and other baked goods. Matcha's popularity has skyrocketed in recent years, especially among Gen-Z — the audience that Dallas Contemporary has been working to cultivate.

The class
The class was free for Dallas Contemporary members and $20 for non-members, and took place in the same gallery space that held hulking metal pieces by artist Martin Gonzales. It centered on making two basic drinks, using two varieties of matcha powder. The ingredients were not complicated: matcha powder and water. The main task was how to make the drink frothy.

Dang Shop matcha class Matcha class at Dallas Contemporary.Dang Spot

The process of making matcha relies on traditional Japanese tea ceremonial elements, with a hyper focus on details.

A long thin scoop, ideally made of bamboo, called the chashaku, is used to measure out grams of matcha powder.
The water must be a certain temperature (170 degrees).
Once the water is poured over the matcha powder, a special whisk called a chasen, also made of bamboo, is used to mix and froth.

(No surprise, Williams-Sonoma has a kit for $34.95.)

Everyone in the class was given a bowl and a plastic version of the bamboo whisk. Tins of matcha powder were passed around; attendees helped themselves to a gram or maybe two, followed by a splash of hot water, matching the matcha with an equal amount of water to create a loose matcha tea paste.

And then it was whisk whisk whisk. First a circular motion to mix it up, then rapidly back and forth, like making the letter "W", to generate a topper of foam. This was not cappuccino-foam, just a thin layer on top, and if the bubbles were too big, it was advised to break them up.

Sipping it solo gave a concentrated focus on the matcha itself, summoning flavors like earthy, nutty, grassy, and mildly sweet — nothing like the loaded-up matcha drinks commonly sold at coffee shops.

But attendees were given the opportunity to supplement the mixture with choice of more water or oat milk; and doctor it up with syrups such as lavender or brown sugar-ube.

Adding the lavender syrup gave the matcha a floral, garden-y personality. Adding the brown sugar-ube syrup gave the matcha a caramel-y richness. You could still taste the matcha, but the additives gave it extra dimension.

Matcha has about 70 to 80 milligrams of caffeine in an 8-ounce serving — a little less than coffee's 90 milligrams, but matcha's aftereffect lingers, releasing more slowly over a longer period of time. After having consumed two cups, I realized I was grinding my teeth on the drive home — and this was even after having stopped in to peek at the Dallas Contemporary's very cool exhibit on tapestry — but it passed quickly enough. Attendees surely experienced an energized Sunday afternoon.

The Dang Spot's first event was at Trinity Groves in November 2024, and they pop up every weekend all around Dallas, most often at fitness studios since being active is a large thing in their lives.

"Our business has a dual interpretation," Vivian says. "Dang is my mom’s last name so it pays homage to her, but ĐẮNG also translates to bitter!"

They're doing a residency at Dallas Contemporary through July, setting up their mobile cart on Friday-Saturday July 18-19 and July 25-26, serving Vietnamese coffee and matcha from 11 am-6 pm, or until sold out.

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Noodle News

YouTube critic Mike Chen ranks his favorite noodles in Dallas

Pho Pasteur

YouTube food critic Mike Chen, who travels the world spotlighting mostly Asian restaurants for his Strictly Dumpling YouTube channel, recently dropped into Dallas to rank his favorite noodles in town.

Titled "24 Hours Eating The Best NOODLES + DUMPLINGS Around DFW," the video follows Chen as he visits five restaurants, ordering noodles and dumplings at his favorite places as well as new discoveries.

The visit marked a return to DFW for Chen, who briefly resided in North Texas in 2021 and who has previously posted videos covering ramen, Vietnamese food, sushi, and barbecue.

Here's where he ate:

Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling
The video starts out with him noting that "there's a lot of new noodle places around the Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Frisco area," before entering Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling, a Chinese Halal restaurant that makes its own noodles, with locations in Plano and McKinney (which CultureMap covered in May — do you think he saw our story?!).

He raves over the extensive menu, featuring not only noodles but "a bunch of dumplings" and many other options like walnut shrimp and mapo tofu.

He also raves over the price. "Wow — $10 for Biangbiang noodles" [a dish featuring flat noodles with minced garlic, green onion, chili powder] — "only in Texas," he says.

He orders the Big Plate chicken, like a chicken stew with flat noodles, chunks of soft potato, carrots, yellow onion, green onion, bell pepper, and cilantro; as well as a variety of dumplings, including beef, pork, chicken & corn, veggie, and soup dumplings, heaping praise on their light chewy wrapper.

"My philosophy is always, eat the worst first and save the best for last, so let's start with the veggie dumplings," he said.

Pho Pasteur
On Day 2, he goes to Pho Pasteur, a longtime highly acclaimed family-owned chain with locations in Richardson, Arlington, and Carrollton, the location he visits.

"I've been thinking about this place for a long long time," he says. "I remember when I was living here, this was one of my favorites."

He orders pho with fatty brisket — "because here in Texas, whenever you see brisket, you get the brisket," he says.

After taking a sip of the broth, he proclaims, "This is the stuff — I've always said that this place has one of the best, if not THE best broth in America, with such a concentrated beefy flavor, and it's got so much depth."

"This might be one of my most-missed food items after I left Dallas," he says.

z.TAO Marketplace
His next destination is the z.TAO Marketplace, an Asian grocery store and food court in Plano which oddly has not updated its social media presence since 2020. He oohs and aahs over the supermarket's bounty including the many different Asian flavors of Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Fanta, then orders a bowl of hulatang, a traditional thick Northern Chinese soup, hand-pulled dan dan noodles, and a sandwich with chopped pork.

Moriya Shokudo Ramen & Curry
He also visits Moriya Shokudo, which started out in a food court in Koreatown before opening a stand-alone restaurant in Richardson in 2024, and which has won local awards for its ramen and curry.

He orders the garlic ramen and marvels at its garlicky-ness, with a black garlic-flavored tonkotsu broth along with roasted whole garlic cloves.

"This is a really intensely garlicky bowl — to call it intense would be an understatement," he says. "I would say this is a must-try."

Pho Big Bowl
His last place is Pho Big Bowl, a Vietnamese restaurant which started out in Watauga before opening a location in Carrollton in 2022.

He likes the lightness and yet potent beefy flavor of the broth. "I feel like when I'm here in Texas, I don't add nearly as much sriracha as I would at places in New York or Seattle," he says.

"I am really jealous of all the good pho places you have here in the Dallas area," he says. "I feel like, of all the cities in Texas, this area has the best pho, hands down."

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