The 16 Best Coffee Shops In LA - Los Angeles - The Infatuation (2024)

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s practically a new coffee shop opening every week in LA. Do we all suffer from chronic exhaustion, or is this a great coffee town? We’d like to think the latter, especially when considering the city’s diversity of outstanding shops that roast beans in the back or take latte art way too seriously. We’ve covered coffee shops where you can get work done and coffee shops where you can look cool, but this guide is for the best of the best—places where you can let your inner coffee snob run wild.

THE SPOTS

Chinatown’s Endorffeine has coffee down to a science, literally. The owner of this Far East Plaza coffee bar (and its sole barista) was previously a biochemist. Unsurprisingly, his approach to coffee-making is quite technical: Different types of water are used to brew cold brew and espresso. Sugar and sweeteners aren’t available. Milk will not touch your Ethiopian pour-over. The menu is short with five hot drinks and three iced, including diligently crafted cortados and single brews, plus less common finds like the milky (milk-less) house coffee, a sweet, non-acidic cold brew that’s steamed until warm and frothy, giving the illusion that there’s milk in every sip That might read a little snobby, but this is where coffee snobs go to indulge themselves. This coffee is also just really good.

If you’re a fancy caffeine connoisseur in LA you’ve probably heard of Menotti’s. This stripped-down Westside operation has locations in Venice, Culver City, and Tokyo (a flex) plus a roaming coffee van that pulls up to the Venice Farmers Market. And after a decade-plus in business, Menotti’s is still pulling high-quality espresso from a vintage La Marzocco for its straightforward menu of americanos, lattes, and flat whites. The fussier drinks on the menu (which aren’t actually that fussy) tend to be our favorites, like a Spanish latte thick with condensed milk and a zippy espresso tonic with citrus.

The guy who founded Menotti’s coffee program (and won a few latte art championships) runs this lowkey counter that pops up insideDudley Market from 8am to 1pm, Wednesday through Sunday. It’s also probably the only time you’ll see Dudley quiet and serene, with scattered people working on laptops and sipping frothy goat milk lattes. If you decide to keep things simple and order a double shot, Nicely (the man himself) serves it in a snifter so you can pick up the espresso’s aroma. He might give you an impromptu lecture on proper espresso-tasting etiquette, too, even if all you came in for was a morning coffee.

​​Depending on your perspective, Maru in Los Feliz is either a beige-toned temple of discerning taste and aesthetics, or just a place where studio assistants from Mount Washington silently debate between Ethiopian and Honduran light roasts while in line. But no one debates whether or not this quiet-but-never-slow coffee shop on Hillhurst serves incredible coffee, particularly drip coffee, pour-overs, and slow-drip cold brew. Admire the gorgeous wooden shelving at the bar while you wait for a cream-topped iced long black, but don’t plan to linger: despite being in a neighborhood filled with sidewalk cafes, Maru (which has a larger second location in the Arts District) is pretty much standing room only.

Kumquat in Highland Park is a quiet coffee shop (i.e., you could walk in half asleep and stay that way until your first cup). Baristas silently brew one of the ten pour-overs on the menu while customers thoughtfully peruse shelves of Japanese coffee filters and imported chocolates. The espresso drinks at Kumquat are flashier than the ambiance, though, like the Tennessee Iced Latte with a savory twist from smoked salt and the Cloudy Latte with thick peanut butter foam. If you’re a tea person who decided to read this guide anyway, Kumquat has your back with fun lattes like milk tea with coconut cream and masala chai.

Kumquat might be peacefully sleepy, but its second location, Loquat, is bright and in-your-face. This Cypress Park corner shop has a sleeker, more industrial look, with swaths of canary yellow everywhere you look. Loquat’s menu also has a more even distribution of espresso, pour-overs, cold brew, and signature drinks. It really comes down to what you’re in the mood for because we’ve never had a drink we didn’t enjoy, like espresso topped with a cloud of mascarpone foam or the geisha cold brew that tastes like sweet cherries.

Fun fact: Be Bright’s founder was named the best barista at the 2024 U.S. Coffee Championships (no big deal). But whether or not he’s the one frothing your latte behind the counter at this breezy, blonde wood shop on Melrose—or at their weekly stand at Smorgasburg—you can expect Be Bright’s seasonal drinks to be interesting and balanced, like the mocha topped with a nutty black sesame foam, or the toasted coconut latte made with macadamia milk and a dusting of smoked sea salt (it tastes like an ocean breeze seasoned your morning coffee).

Document Coffee Bar in Koreatown looks a lot like an art gallery, and that’s probably because it was once. This minimalist concrete shop fills its blank walls with photo portraits of its regulars, and the light fixtures are made from repurposed paint tubs. Everything about this place is a little sleeker than you'd expect, including the way they make their nutty house cold brew. The chicory-infused coffee slowly brews, drip-by-drip, in giant glass towers behind the bar and gets subtly sweetened with maple syrup. If you are in the mood for a strong iced coffee, this is your spot.

Verve is a Santa Cruz-based coffee roaster with four shops in LA, all of which feature several attributes we love in a good coffee spot. Its breezy shops are gorgeous and perfect for long coffee dates. Their nitro “flash brew” on tap always has a thick foam cap like a beautiful pint of stout. If all you want is a well-made cappuccino, cafe au lait, or gibraltar, very few coffee chains are more consistent—and convenient—than Verve.

Loop Espresso Club in Eagle Rock has a lot in common with a cool bar. There’s a long wooden countertop, a record player spinning vinyl, and fancy drinks that require as many steps as a craft co*cktail. Consider this an ideal place to diverge from the standard americano with drinks like espresso-spiked Filipino hot chocolate, Vietnamese egg coffees dusted with cocoa, and double shots crowned with honey-flavored cream.

The flavors in Bloom & Plume’s coffee drinks are as bright and colorful as its technicolor purple decor. This coffee shop in Historic Filipinotown (which shares owners with the popular flower shop next door) is home to juicy, fruity, and floral coffees. Order their citrusy Future roast sans milk, and you’ll think you’re drinking passion fruit tea. Naturally sweet and fragrant are good descriptors for everything else on Bloom & Plume's menu, too, like lattes hinted with honey, lavender, and rose.

Reading Stereoscope’s menu feels like perusing tax documents: there’s a lot of fine print that makes your head hurt. But this sleek spot in Echo Park (with a second location in Hollywood) is a paradise for coffee snobs who are type-A about pour-overs. These filtered coffees are delicious, even if your untrained palate can’t pick up every note of peonies, apple, or orange marmalade that are supposedly in your brew. The shop charts out each roast to give you an idea of acid, aroma, and complexity levels so you can still make an educated decision at the counter.

Mandarin Coffee is a small cafe inside a charming British-themed shopping arcade. The space transports you somewhere far away from Pasadena (Hogwarts, perhaps?), even if you’re waiting in line outside due to the limited space. The creative Chinese-inspired drinks are worth queuing for, though, like an espresso tonic brightened up with tart pineapple jam and a bold Vienna latte made silky with the perfect amount of sweet cream.

This beautiful corner cafe in Echo Park resembles a sun-filled ceramic studio, with a warm glow that permeates the room like a camera filter. Canyon caters to a certain tote bag-slinging, clog-wearing crowd, the type of people who appreciate the vintage record player playing yacht rock on the bookshelf. But if you just want a good cup of coffee, you’ll find that, too. You’ll usually find a small selection of Peruvian and Colombian roasts with nutty, milky, caramel-y notes—flavors that taste good as black drip or a creamy oat latte. And if you’re in a rush, Canyon has cold brew and matcha pistachio lattes on tap.

Show up on the weekend (or anytime after 11am), and there’s a good chance you’ll have to wait in line for coffee at Community Goods. It’s less than ideal, and that’s before navigating the “content creators” on the patio. But Community Goods is still worth a morning pitstop because the standard espresso drinks are an upgrade over other trendy shops, and the busier drinks are delicious without being too much. The cream-topped einspanners have a slightly bitter edge from cacao powder, the espresso tonics are so refreshing they’re almost chuggable, and the housemade syrup in the vanilla bean latte is sweet without tasting like you drank your mom’s bottle of Coffee Mate creamer.

Cognoscenti is a local roaster with three shops around LA that stick to the standard lineup of espresso drinks, cold brews, and pour-overs—nothing overly fancy. The diversity lies in their daily roast rotation of spotlighting unique coffees. It’s the kind of place where granola people with morning “coffee rituals” go to taste a “clean” pour-over. And if you don’t know what that means, the ones at Cognoscenti are prime examples. You wait over five minutes for the barista to slowly brew your coffee, which is painstakingly long if you don’t care. But if you do, you’ll (hopefully) taste all the fancy flavor notes on the specials chalkboard.