Kuro Coffee

Matcha and espresso share equal billing at this Notting Hill counter, both made to order at the bar. KURO Coffee is the coffee branch of a small London family that also runs KURO Bagels and KURO Bakery, opened in a two-floor building that had sat empty near the founder’s home and shaped deliberately as an independent alternative to the chains on the high street.

Traditional matcha, made properly

Traditional matcha is one of the two core drinks, named alongside specialty coffee on the cafe’s own billing, and both are treated as precision work rather than as a menu filler. Within the wider KURO identity matcha sits beside coffee blends and fragrant teas, which gives the counter a broader drinks vocabulary than espresso alone. The Infatuation listed the shop in its 2026 matcha guide.

There is coffee history behind the bar too. Ozone Coffee has been a long-standing wholesale partner and helped the business with everything from machines to grinders, which placed the Notting Hill room inside a specialty setup from the day it opened. Matcha remains the clearest non-coffee signature.

A calm room with a bakery behind it

Food comes straight from KURO Bakery rather than from an outside supplier. Pastries, cakes, cookies and brownies are baked within the group and delivered fresh each day, which makes the sweet counter part of a coordinated system across the brand’s nearby sites rather than a tray of whatever was available.

The wider bakery has one named signature: cream-filled sakuras, which have travelled as far as the group’s Harvey Nichols outpost alongside its cakes, cookies and pastries. At the Notting Hill shop the strongest food identity is simply the daily delivery. The room is Japanese-minimalist and quiet, spread over two floors, with more seating upstairs than the ground floor suggests, and it suits locals and visitors rather than any formal restaurant rhythm.

Order the matcha, then look for sakura

Start with the traditional matcha, especially if the point is to understand what the shop puts forward first. If coffee is the reason for the visit, the relevant detail is the Ozone-supported bar behind it: machines, grinders and a wholesale relationship that shaped the original setup. Tea belongs in the picture too, but matcha and specialty coffee are the two pillars here.

Pair the drink with something from the bakery side. Brownies, cookies, cakes and pastries are the everyday categories, all made within the KURO family, and if the cream-filled sakuras appear they connect the order to the group’s best-known bake. Take a seat upstairs if the ground floor is full; the room is calmer than Notting Hill outside it.