Berkeley’s Third Culture Bakery brings “immersive” mochi bakery and matcha cafe to Walnut Creek - East Bay Times

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You asked and Wenter Shyu and Sam Butarbutar answered.

The founders of West Berkeley’s Third Culture Bakery, home of the original mochi muffin, are opening a new bakery and matcha cafe in Walnut Creek after receiving so many customers from the Contra Costa County area during the pandemic.

“Everyone’s been driving out to us so let’s come to them,” says Shyu, who just opened the first of Third Culture’s new high-concept “immersive experience” cafes in Denver last week. Their next two “showrooms” will be in the South Bay and Peninsula.

The Walnut Creek cafe, the first in California, will take over a 700-square-foot former retail space in the Main Street Plaza on Botelho Drive, next to Site for Sore Eyes. When it opens in August, look for scratch-made mochi pastries, like ube muffins, butter mochi doughnuts and whisked-to-order matcha drinks using matcha sourced from shade-grown small farms in Kyoto, Japan.

But, also look for rainbows. The space, as Shyu describes it, is meant to evoke a dream state, with floor-to-ceiling holographic prism windows that reflect different colors throughout the day and interior walls wrapped in shiny chrome vinyl to make guests feel as though they are immersed in pink light and even be able to see their reflections. Why all this? For inclusivity, Shyu says.

“Last year was so difficult,” he explains. “On top of everything we had the racial reckoning and now this year with the attacks on Asian Americans, we as queer Asian immigrant owners wanted to use our platform for social change and social justice. We are expanding to let more people come into our space and celebrate who they are, just be, without any of the craziness of the world.”

Shyu is referring to Third Culture Bakery’s efforts to create 10,000 safety kits to help Asian Americans in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York and Denver combat racist attacks. You can donate to the cause at www.shopthirdculturebakery.com.

Back to the bakery. In addition to mochi doughnuts and muffins, which are made with California-grown mochiko rice flour from Koda Farms, organic butter and a house-made blend of pandan and coconut milk, the cafe will feature seasonal matcha desserts, like soft serve and parfaits, in the summer. They’ll also have sparkling iced matcha drinks made with a special roasted ceremonial matcha. The scope and breadth of the matcha program is reminiscent of San Francisco’s Stonemill Matcha but without the traditional teahouse vibe. This spot will be edgier.

“For us, traveling through Japan and Taiwan, where I’m from, and seeing what is popular there, we want to bring some of that fun immersive experience to these new matcha cafes,” Shyu says.

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