A tea bar.
Sixteen seats.
No rush.
A tea bar.
Sixteen seats.
No rush.
We serve Japanese teas — some deep and oceanic, others roasted and warm. A pot of gyokuro steeps three times, so one order lasts as long as you want it to. Alongside them, handmade sweets and seasonal drinks.
Every cup, every vessel is the work of someone who has trusted us with their craft. The sweets we shape by hand ourselves. We try to share it all properly.
If you don’t know what to order, tell us how the day has been. We’ll pick.
Matcha · Gyokuro · Genmaicha · Hōjicha
Seasonal drinks · Handmade sweets
We source from gardens in Kyoto, Shizuoka and Miyazaki —
working with Nakai Organic Tea Garden, Hattori Tea Farm, Ippodo Tea Co.
People tend to speak more quietly here. They stay longer than they planned. About a third have been here before.
The bar is oak. The walls hold light the way old walls do. There is a tatami, a communal table, light sculptures. The name swaps 店 — shop — for 房 — room. A quieter word for a quieter place.
Pick your bowl from the shelf; there are no bad choices. Raku, Hagi, work from Japan and Europe, all of it in use. By the time the tea reaches you it has passed through many hands, and the last pair are the maker's. From 15 November the shelf also holds Raku bowls from Katsura-gama, a kiln in Kyoto; those are for sale, and we never serve tea in them.
On Sunday 15 November Rumi Higaki, whose family runs Katsura-gama, a Raku kiln in Kyoto, serves the first bowls of tea and talks about the kiln. Guests of the morning choose first from its bowls, before they go on sale to everyone at 14:00.
The rest is Still Hours as every month: the room two hours before we open, ten people, a bowl of matcha, then a tray with the season’s dessert, a wagashi and a pot you steep yourself.
Two hours before we open, the door stays shut and ten people have the room. A bowl of matcha to wake up, then a tray made to last the morning: the season’s dessert, a wagashi and a pot you steep yourself. Read, draw, write, or nothing at all.
The mornings after: leaveLeave your email and you’ll hear the next date before anyone else. You confirm once by email.
Katsura-gama is a Raku kiln in Nishikyō-ku, Kyoto, run by the Higaki family. Its bowls are shaped by hand, carved thin and drawn from the kiln with tongs while they still glow. From Sunday 15 November eleven bowls from its workshop are on our shelf, to be picked up and held: the ten below, and one that Rumi Higaki brings with her. There is one of each design, and each is for sale, at 330 €.
The room is for walking into — most of it always will be, and you can sit as long as you like. What’s listed below can be held in advance. Nothing else needs holding.
A set is an hour at the counter with nothing to decide. We pour, you sit.
Kissabō was opened in Berlin in February 2026. It is a place we needed ourselves — somewhere to drink something made properly, and to sit for an hour without obligation.
We hope you find it the same way.
The teas we pour at the bar, boxed to brew at home. Leave your email — we'll write once, when the first batch ships. After that, occasional letters. No noise.
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