Koots Green Tea

I miss this place a lot. I would drive all the way from Seattle just to have their chocolate matcha green tea. I was sad and obviously i’m still sad to see this place long gone.
Please come back…

It’s been a couple of months since Koots closed and I feel very upset about it.
Like right now. I’m feeling the anger.
My perfect combination of visiting Container Store and Koots at the same time is crushed.
Why! why! do you do this to me!!!
I should have put five stars.
so let me do that now…
But now is too late! it’s all too late!

Great study place, great drinks, great green tea tiramisu.
awesomeness!!!

Probably the most unique place I’ve seen in coffee shop genre. Although the banner says «green tea», some of the highlights are actually the baked goods — matcha muffins, lemon ginger muffins, and especially the matcha tiramasu. I’d never tried the ice cream, but it appeared to be quite popular.
Unfortunate that they closed so suddenly.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news:
ITS CLOSED NOW! :(Was walking to work today and their last day was ⁵⁄₁₁. Was a fan of their tea too.
DAMN RECESSION!

I really love this place! The ambiance, the deco and a small tatami room. They have an interesting book about «Chanoyu» if you’re interested to know more about Japanese tea ceremony.
It will be better if they had more bakery selections. Ah, don’t forget to try the Green Tea tiramisu. Speaking of ice-​cream. I just love the Matcha Sundae.
If you park at Lincoln garage. They do validate your parking. All of the servers are extremely friendly. They do have Wi-​Fi so you can enjoy your drink and surf the net.

This is one of my favorite places to go when I’m in town. I love that they offer rice milk (the only café I’ve found that does this!) for those of us who are dairy and soy intolerant. All of their drinks are delicious and the friends and family I’ve gone with enjoy the food as well. The soft serve is a nice cold treat, too. The service is wonderfully polite and efficient. I highly recommend Koots for the nice atmosphere as well.

Koot’s is a like a green tea version of Starbucks. They offer all sorts of teas, ranging from sometime more traditional like sencha, to a more modern matcha latte. The teas are definitely good especially if you like matcha, but I find them to be a tad expensive, ounce for ounce it’s like 30 cents more than Starbucks and I already think Starbucks is overpriced.
The best part of Koot’s that you can’t miss however, is the matcha soft serve. It’s only 2 dollars and you get plenty, and if you like matcha, you’ll love the taste.
If you want to try one of the drinks I recommend the Iced Pearl Latte and the Matcha Chocolat, both are on the sweeter side as opposed to their other drinks which can be bitter.
Overall this is a great place to drop by and hang out at if you are in the Bellevue Square area, they even have some tatami seating in the corner that can be fun to sit at.

Koots would have earned 3 stars ONLY if the damn cashier would have gotten my order straight after the 1^st OR 2^nd time! I couldn’t figure out why he could not under «NO MILK» for the Matcha tea. I order 3 drinks total (1 Minta Matcha Latte, Reg Matcha Lattes & 1 Matcha Tea. It was a bit frustrating but luckily the nice girl Barista took the time to listen and fixed the drink order.
The concept of the tea shop is great but the quality and taste fell short here due to the quality of the Matcha. Medium to High quality Matcha does not taste like Koot’s Matcha… and for this price, I’m better whisking up my own Matcha at home… I’ve had much better!

Love their little seating area in the corner (when you’re there, you’ll know what I mean).
I had a bubble tea with ice in it — so they called it a tea latte and had tapioca which I normally don’t like however, in skipping lunch earlier that day, I figured this would be my sustenance.
Sooo, I didn’t realize what a horrible sluuurping sound my straw makes because the ice prevents me from slopping up all of my tapioca pearls (a mistake on my part because I normally don’t select drinks with pearls and ice chunks). note to self — not ladylike.
Also not ladylike — spearing pearls with your straw and eating them in that manner — it’s like when your friend has an object in their hand and you try to grab it and they snap it out of your reach…
I was, however, able to get the hang of the scoop technique… Blood sugar level normalized! (but again ladylike? highly questionable)
So to finish my treatise on drinking bubble tea @ koots, I really liked it. Not super sweet and had me wanting more…
ps. does this make me a lover of tapioca pearls? hm. don’t think so. But I’d have it at Koots again!

****This Place is now closed***** (bummer)
Koots is a relatively new Japanese Starbucks like tea place. They have their line up of drinks that are based off of Japanese Green Tea, Matcha. I personally love the concept of this place, since I’m in love with Japanese Tea. If you’re curious I suggest you give it a try, and don’t let the drink names and cups fool you into thinking it should and would taste anything similar to the coffee drink equivalents.
They’re moderately price, the staff (except for 1) is very friendly and helpful, asking questions if you’re confused will get you samples.
If anything GO FOR THE ICE CREAM! Their soft serve Matcha ice cream is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good!!! Get it with the vanilla, and Mmm Mmm a bit of Matcha heaven. You can even order a Matcha Milkshake (it’s not on their menu but they can make it).
My drink recommendations are:
The Matcha Chocolat (if you’re into sweet)
Houjicha (if you just want some tea to calm your stomach after that heavy meal @ Lincoln Square)
I’ve been to their Roppongi Store in Japan, hopefully one day they’ll bring all that good food menu here too!

I heard about Koots from my Japanese gfs who knew I was into green tea when they first opened. It’s convenient to get to — plenty of parking at Lincoln Square & close to Bellevue square. We visited many times ourselves and with our friends, made recommendations to others… then fell out of love with it and eventually stopped going.
The space is nice and clean, even interesting. The many macha and chocolate drinks we tried were rather good. It was the service that we were not particularly attracted to. We’ve repeatedly run into the cashier who didn’t make us feel exactly welcome: no smiles, short/​curt replies to questions. etc to our friendly and respectful inquiries and comments. Unless it’s because of cultural differences in services and dynamics that we don’t understand, we’d prefer to take our business where we are happy while spending our money. The ppl at Tully’s on the same floor as well as other green tea places were perfectly friendly and happy to take our business.

Often visiting Lincoln Square Koot’s Green Tea seemed like an interesting place I had to try. I gave it a shot this weekend. The décor is quite nice, and the menu options are plentiful. The quality of the green tea is also very nice. I really don’t know what else I could say about this place that would be much different than what you would say about starbucks and/​or Tullys. Fast, friendly service at a place you can hang out. Good quality drinks, but don’t get me wrong you’re getting ripped off to hell. You’re paying $ 4 – 6 for something that costs 20 cents to make at home, but I guess the same could be said about any food product.
Anyway, I don’t think I’ll go running to Koots green tea any time soon cus I’m absolutely craving it, I’ve had better tea and better boba elsewhere. But if I want some caffeine somewhere else other than Tully’s/Seattle’s best/​starbucks and I’m around the area… it’s an equal alternative…
actually maybe a little better. as there doesn’t seem to be lines like the other coffee joints… and I can actually pronounce Japanese words correctly. Where in (name your Seattle coffee chain) I usually feel like I’m at a brothel whenever I’m ordering Coffee. Gimme a Tall, Non-​Fat Mocha with whip cream and sprinkles… no ice!
~G

Very impressive and upscale tea drink store that is very different than the Teavana’s in the SF Bay Area, or Ten Ren Taiwanese tea shops. There’s interesting varieties of drinks and really hard to make up one’s mind in one visit, and the light macha powder based sweetened iced tea drink I had may not have been a good representation. Luckily I’m back in the area in late November so I’ll definitely check it out again.

The first US store opened on May 13^th in Lincoln Square, Bellevue. Coincidentally, I was reading about it in the Seattle Times on Sunday morning, and we stopped by later that day after doing some shopping nearby. The founder is the Japanase partner of Tully’s (a Seattle-​based coffee chain, way better than Starbuck’s). After taking Tully’s from nowhere to hundreds of stores in Japan, he moved on to his lifelong dream of opening a Japanese green-​tea chain in the US.
The store feels both trendy and soothing with its spartan, Zen-​like décor and open feel. Their drinks obviously mainly feature Japanese green tea (matcha, sencha, hojicha and genmaicha) either brewed as regular tea or made into latts with steamed milk. They also make several nonfat smoothies, including mango and black sesame, and serve sushi rolls if you’re peckish.
I’ve been enjoying the Starbuck’s Green Tea latts recently, so I tried something similar: the kuromitsu latt, which is made with matcha powder and Japanese molasses. Pretty good, but the molasses wasn’t well mixed, so the drink started out fairly better and ended overly sweet. The molasses does give it an interesting taste (if you like the stuff — it’s kind of metallic).
The white chocolate and hojicha drink sounds interesting — I’ll have to try it next time.