Aligned & Awake: I Came, I Scanned the Menu, I Judged Accordingly

The unofficial field guide to finding a decent matcha latte while travelling, written by someone who takes this far too seriously.

Aligned & Awake
My reflections on life through travel, human design, energy, astrology, and emotional clarity. Not as a guru. Just one person figuring it out in real time.

---

I have been drinking matcha for almost twenty years.

Before it became trendy. Before every person with a linen tote bag and suspiciously tiny sunglasses decided that a green drink was a personality. Before influencers started holding it beside their face in cafés with exposed brick and one lonely fern in the corner, looking contemplative about absolutely nothing.

I was there first. Whisk in hand. Slightly smug. Deeply hydrated. Possibly unbearable at dinner parties.

My relationship with matcha began the way most of my obsessions do, with me researching something entirely sensible and then sliding down a rabbit hole until I could no longer see daylight. I loved green tea. I was fascinated by Japan. I was reading about Japanese food, health, and longevity, and how certain cultures treat food as something with ritual, history, and genuine care, the preparation as important as the eating.

Then came matcha. Beautiful, bright, earthy matcha. A powdered green tea made from shade-grown leaves, traditionally whisked into hot water until it becomes this vivid, frothy, slightly ceremonial little cup of calm.

Then I trained as a holistic nutritionist, which did not help matters. Suddenly I had information.

Dangerous thing, information.

I learned about antioxidants, catechins, L-theanine, chlorophyll, and the way matcha delivers a steadier energy than coffee, less of the heart-racing panic goblin, more of a gentle internal orchestra tuning up for the day.

Matcha feels like someone opening the curtains and saying, “Right, love, let’s be useful without ruining the nervous system.”

Matcha is not for everyone, and I respect that. Some people taste it and look personally betrayed, which is a completely valid response. Done badly, it tastes like someone mowed a lawn and then charged nine dollars for the clippings. Done well, though — soft, creamy, grounded, a drink with actual manners — it’s genuinely wonderful.

Enjoying a Matcha in Peru

Everywhere I go, I find the nearest café and assess whether anyone behind the counter knows what they’re doing with green powder.

Some people visit museums. Some people find churches, ruins, markets, men with accents, whatever their soul requires.

I scan menus like a detective in a cardigan.

My standards are straightforward. The matcha should not be bitter. If it is, the water was too hot, or the powder has been there so long it has its own loyalty card. It should have an earthy elegance, and if I see syrup being reached for, I begin to withdraw in real time.

If they pull out a bamboo whisk, I relax.

If they scoop powder into a bowl, add warm water, and whisk it properly before adding milk, I become loyal in a way usually reserved for childhood friendships and excellent hairdressers.

A good matcha takes a few minutes. You cannot rush it. Well, you can, but then you end up with clumps, bitterness, and emotional damage. Ask me how I know.

When I still had a house, a kitchen, and all the little tools of domestic life, I made an exceptional matcha latte. I say this with no humility because false modesty helps no one.

I had the whisk, the bowl and the good powder. I knew the water temperature. I had the whole morning ritual down to something approaching a spiritual practice. Sometimes I added grass-fed butter, a little coconut manna, and MCT oil, because there was a season of my life when I was very committed to becoming the sort of woman who could say “healthy fats” before 8 am without irony.

It worked, though. Warm, creamy, grounding. It made me feel less like a woman answering emails and more like a monk with WiFi.

Then I became nomadic, and matcha became a global treasure hunt.

Peru surprised me.

In Miraflores, Lima, I found a little organic café that made a beautiful matcha latte. Smooth, earthy and properly made. A matcha that made the world feel briefly less complicated. They also had fantastic pancakes, which is unrelated but spiritually relevant.

I kept going back. This is what happens when I find a good place. I become a regular at alarming speed. By the third visit, I’m walking in like, “hello, it’s me again, your green-tea-dependent woman from abroad.”

Bordeaux delivered magnificently.

Horace Café deserves a small standing ovation. They had one of the best carrot cakes I’ve ever eaten, and the matcha was beautiful. Carrot cake and matcha are a pairing so emotionally supportive it should be covered by insurance. I tried several places in Bordeaux because obviously I was conducting important field research, and Horace won. The matcha tasted like someone cared. The carrot cake tasted like someone’s grandmother had a secret and had taken it to her grave.

Then there was Ibiza.

Ah, Ibiza in January. Beautiful. Quiet. Slightly empty. Lots of sea air. Lots of space.

No matcha.

Not a whisper. Not a fleck. Not a single green dusting anywhere on the entire island. I spent a month there and arrived in France having gone five weeks without it. Five weeks. I was not well. I was wandering around like a woman in a Victorian novel who needed sea air and a fainting couch, except what I actually needed was a bamboo whisk and someone who took powder seriously.

Ibiza, I love you. But you let me down, and I want you to sit with that.

Ireland was also tricky, which, as an Irish woman, I say with the specific disappointment of someone who expected better from home.

I love Ireland with my whole heart. Ireland can do tea. Ireland can do bread. Ireland can do butter so good it makes you question every life choice that led you to margarine. But matcha? On that trip, I found maybe one, and it was not great. We’re just not fully sucking diesel there yet. The island gave us Guinness and soda bread and I suppose we can’t have everything, but I remain hopeful that some enterprising person on the island will sort this out before I’m back.

London is improving, though I’m watching it with cautious optimism. There are places doing good things, but too many are still leaning into syrup, sweet, pre-mixed, sugary green drinks that taste less like matcha and more like a cupcake went through a wellness phase and started a podcast.

Canada has had some wins. There is a local café near my friends that makes a good matcha. They whisk it, which immediately earns my trust. It says: “We know what this is. We respect the leaf. We are not acting the maggot with a pump bottle.”

I also have strong opinions about milk; if you’ve read this far, it shouldn’t surprise you.

For a matcha latte, I prefer regular cow’s milk. I know. Controversial in the age of oat everything. But cow’s milk gives matcha the creaminess it deserves without hijacking the flavour. Almond milk changes the taste completely. Coconut milk can work, but then coconut takes over and the matcha ends up sitting in the back seat wondering what happened to its moment. Oat milk can be fine depending on the brand, but sometimes makes the whole thing too heavy and sweet, like it’s trying too hard.

These are personal preferences. Not commandments from the green tea gods.

Matcha drowned in sugar stops being matcha entirely; it becomes a dessert pretending to be a wellness drink, and we’ve all met enough people pretending to be something they’re not.

Matcha has followed me from the nutritionist with the whisk to the newly untethered woman hauling luggage through airports, hunting cafés in cities where I can’t even ask for what I want, let alone find ceremonial grade.

It has been there in Lima, beside pancakes and heartbreak. In Bordeaux, beside carrot cake and notebook pages. In Canada, tucked into ordinary mornings. In London, still under cautious investigation. In Ibiza, tragically absent, like a character killed off too early in season one.

It’s the ritual of it, the search, the small moment of familiarity in places that don’t know me yet. When you’re travelling full-time, you learn quickly which small things make you feel like yourself again. A café table near a window. A warm cup held in both hands.

For me, it’s matcha.

My little green anchor. My calm-in-a-cup with a superiority complex.

So if you ever find yourself in a new city and spot me through a café window, there’s a strong chance I’ll be there watching the barista like a suspicious aunt at a wedding.

If the whisk comes out, I’ll relax.

If the syrup bottle appears, pray for me.

And if the matcha arrives smooth, warm, earthy, and beautifully made?

I’ll take a sip, soften my shoulders, and think:

Right.

We’re home for a minute.

---

Tell me…

Everyone has their thing, the one they seek out wherever they go, the small ritual that makes a new place feel survivable. What's yours?

---