We Tried Tokyo’s ‘God’ Cheese Tea at Harajuku Bubble Tea Stand Machi Machi

The latest trend in bubble tea to hit Tokyo is known as ‘cheese tea’. Sounds like an unappetising concept, but don’t worry, there’s no blocks of cheddar floating in the beverages.

The name refers to the creamy and thick topping, which contains cream cheese, but does not have an overly cheesy taste and is, in fact, the perfect salty companion for sweet tea. Just think of it as cheesecake, but for tea.

Anyway, for worshippers at the altar of boba, an exciting new business has recently opened in Harajuku, the spiritual home of all that is cute and sweet. The cheese tea specialist shop is called ‘Machi Machi’ and it was a massive hit in its home country of Taiwan, where the local media dubbed it ‘god cheese tea’.

Such a heavenly review would leave anyone curious, so we made a pilgrimage to the capital of kawaii to see if Machi Machi could possibly live up to such outrageous claims of divinity.

'God' Cheese Tea at Machi Machi, Harajuku

We decided to try out two of the menu items in order to make a definitive judgement.

Despite lacking the famous cheese topping, we would be foolish not to try the Harajuku-exclusive, Brulee Milk Tea. Obviously pitched with Harajuku’s dessert loving clientele in mind, the black milk tea is covered by a custard cream top, caramelised to a satisfying crisp just like a real crème brulee. The luxuriously saccharine experience of both the sweet tea and topping left us in a sugar-induced state of euphoria. Not recommended for those without a robust sweet tooth.

The Melon Cheese Tea is a summer-only limited item and is described by Machi Machi as a luxurious fresh melon tea frozen drink. After our decadent dessert beverage, it was in our interests to order a nice healthy fruit tea, and we added taro potato balls for even more health benefits. The promised transcendent encounter with the godly cheese topping awaited us.

We put our doubting Thomas lips to the cup and verified the viscous, velvety divinity of the cream. Then we tried the tea, a refreshing mix of juicy, fresh melon and fragrant jasmine tea. When mixed, the two layers formed the deific summer beverage that was prophesied.

Behold, the God Cheese Tea, and shun the non-believers.