Hvala

Hvala has been one of Singapore's more serious Japanese tea operations for several years, and it recently consolidated around a new flagship at Odeon Towers on North Bridge Road, a short walk from City Hall. The move is worth flagging because the old CHIJMES flagship has closed, and a number of published guides still send people there. The Odeon room is considerably larger, with high ceilings, a mix of conventional tables and tatami-style floor seating, and a dedicated retail section selling tea leaves, matcha powder and brewing accessories.

The sourcing is what separates Hvala from the broader matcha boom. Rather than buying finished powder from a distributor, the house sources and produces its own matcha and hojicha lines directly from family plantations in Uji, Kyoto — the region most closely associated with high-grade Japanese green tea. Bowls are whisked to order in front of the guest, which matters more than it sounds: matcha degrades quickly once prepared, and batching it is the single most common shortcut in the category. Across drinks, desserts and food there are more than thirty matcha and hojicha items, so the leaf runs through the whole menu rather than appearing only in a latte.

The food has grown alongside the tea. The flagship serves proper mains — cold salmon sashimi udon, chazuke — and a matcha kaya toast in which brioche is layered with butter and the house matcha-infused kaya and served with soft-boiled eggs, a neat Singaporean-Japanese hybrid. For a non-drinker this is a daytime and early-evening room rather than a night out: it closes at 8:30pm most days and 9:30pm on Saturdays. Within those hours it is the most rigorous cup of matcha in the city.

One practical note for anyone working from a guidebook or an older blog post: Hvala operates several outlets, and the addresses in circulation are unreliable. The CHIJMES site has closed. There is a refreshed flagship at 111 Somerset, which has become known for a robotic matcha-whisking arm, and a retail counter at Takashimaya in Ngee Ann City. The Odeon Towers room described here is the fullest expression of the tea house format, with the seating and the retail range to match.