Third Culture Bakery in Aurora Cultural Arts District Creates Tasty Mochi Treats, Matchas, and More to Help Make the World a Kinder, Inclusive Place

Home of the Original Mochi Muffin®, Third Culture Bakery offers pastries, butter mochi donuts, matcha lattes, and other foods and drinks based on recipes that the founders grew up with from Indonesia and Taiwan. LGBTQ-owned with love & kindness, this bakery offers not only delicious treats, but sanctuary and support for underrepresented communities.

After falling in love in Berkeley, CA, chef Sam Butarbutar and Wenter Shyu began their bakery together in 2016, naming it Third Culture, with recipes “inspired by [their] upbringing as Third Culture Kids – kids who grew up in a culture different than that of their parent’s,” their website says. Building the bakery to become a symbol for diversity, inclusiveness, and acceptance, Butarbutar and Shyu would pull many all-nighters as the Mochi Muffin® and their bakery began to turn heads in the Bay Area. By 2018, they had over 60 wholesale locations, and later expanded to the Aurora Cultural Arts District in February 2020, and the RiNo Arts District in April 2021.

We stopped in at the Aurora location to try the famous muffins, made with California-grown mochiko rice flour from Koda Farms, organic French-style butter, and Third Culture’s house-made blend of pandan and coconut milk. They have many different flavors of muffins and donuts, including matcha, chocolate brownie, and black sesame. Third Culture also offers a variety of teas and drinks to choose from. We’d recommend the Strawberry Lychee Matcha Latte, made with their stoneground green tea matcha from an 11th generation family farm in Uji Kyoto, Japan!

Third Culture Bakery’s two Colorado locations are at Colfax & Elmira across from the Aurora Fox Arts Center, and at 25th & Lawrence in RiNo/Five Points, next to Uchi Denver sushi. They also have nationwide shipping at thirdculturebakery.com.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•