The Arts District is a favored hangout spot for Angelenos, mostly because the neighborhood is one of the few in LA whose surroundings donโ€™t require a carย to travel between. Visitors can easily walk to Little Tokyo, Chinatown, and even further into the heart of Downtown, making it an extra convenient spot to begin an urban day hike. Just outside DTLA, the Arts District is three square miles filled with a variety of breweries, shopping, dining and coffee spots. Freshly-painted graffiti covers the brick walls of its newly-renovated warehouses, making unique murals and accent lights that line the sidewalks and frame the entryways of sleek boutiques and apartmentsโ€”the Arts District today would be a far cry from the artist colony it served back in the 1970s.

Once the sun sets, the neighborhood transforms into a hub for night lifeโ€”the streets pack with twenty-somethings looking for a beer, crowding the fronts of breweries and bars. But in the daytime, this is a coffee city, and the now-resplendent cafes scattered on Mateo, Traction, and Santa Fe Avenue fill to the brim. Here, we detail a coffee crawl that takes you to some of the current, and future, Arts District standouts, all with your car parked in one place.

Blacktop Coffee

Blacktop Coffee is the first product of Tyler Wellsโ€™ (formerly of Handsome Coffee) small empire of coffee boutiques located throughout the city (Highland Parkโ€™s Civil Coffee and DTLAโ€™s Nice Coffee being his other locations). Blacktop usesย Counter Culture Coffee. The shopโ€™s interior, exterior, and beverage presentation make visiting an eye-grabbing experience, with tasteful wood and teal accents, an ivy-walled patio, and wooden block seating.

Blacktopโ€™s drink menu is written simply. There are three choices for espresso drinksโ€”black, white, and chocolateโ€”plus a daily drip/cold brew, andย selection of teas and chai. Then thereโ€™s the toastโ€”which for a few extra bucks can be adorned with salmon, picked vegetables, and more. And just in case youโ€™re still not sated after stopping in, well, Salt and Straw is right across the street.

Blacktop Coffee is located atย 826 E 3rd St, Los Angeles. Visit their official websiteย and follow them on Twitter and Instagram.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters

Portland, Oregonโ€™s Stumptown Coffee Roasters was a massive wholesale supplier for LA cafes for its first few years of operation in the city, and although they still have active wholesale accounts here, they added a beautiful cafe build-out to their Arts District roastery in 2013. It’s a warehouse blend of Pacific Northwest-meets-cafe-meets coffee boutique. Clear Doug Fir wood counters, cement floors, and chocolate cream ceramic cups remind visitors of the companyโ€™s Portland roots. Located on a quiet corner of Santa Fe, the cafe shares foot traffic with DTLAโ€™s renowned Bestia restaurant and HD Buttercup furniture. They sell a massive array of flavored cold brews, juices, mugs, coffee kits, and other Stumptown paraphernalia in addition to offering multiple cold brews on-tap. Thereโ€™s also coffee on Bee House pourover via a Modbar tap system, and espresso drinks made on a handsome Pantechnicon custom La Marzoccoโ€”currently, a seasonal Horchata cold brew is on the menu. Pastries from Sugar Bloom Bakery round out the list of reasons to make Stumptownโ€™s a spot worth checking out.

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Stumptown Coffee is located atย 806 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The Wheelhouse

On one side of The Wheelhouse is the epitome of an aesthetic-centered cafe with a damn good coffee program to match it; on the other is a bike shop. In between are deep teal accents, wallpapered ceilings, and cement floors. Thick slabs of wood, glass coffee decanters, and speckled, cross-hatched ceramic mugs practically beg you to stay and hang out. Wheelhouseโ€™s menu offers a daily coffee, cold brew, and espresso with โ€œsmall,โ€ โ€œmedium,โ€ or โ€œlargeโ€ pours of milkโ€”all courtesy of Olympia Coffee Roasting Company. A separate menu at the counter offers additional offerings onย AeroPress, coffee-Superba pastry combos, and seasonal drink specials created by the Wheelhouse owners and baristas. While youโ€™re sipping, even non-cyclists will find something that catches their attention inย the selection of boutique bike gearโ€”cyclists, on the other hand, can take advantage of bike repair services, rentals, and happy hour rides.

The Wheelhouse is located atย 1375 E 6th St #6, Los Angeles. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Blue Bottle Coffee

Blue Bottle Coffee Companyโ€™s first ever LA location, located in the former Handsome Coffee space, is a staple cafe in the Arts District on Mateo, and is full of a constant bustle of customers grabbing coffee, whether theyโ€™re between gigs on set, residents, or local creatives. The cafe is also a part of Blue Bottleโ€™s LA headquarters and roastery, and carries the smell of fresh roasted coffee thrice-weekly.ย Like much of the Arts District cafes, Blue Bottle sticks to the warehouse appearance, keeping its cement floors and roasting room on display. Stop in for a drip coffee, which only gets brewed via pour-over style, or get your cold brew fix with Blue Bottleโ€™s signature chicory-roasted New Orleans coffee. Like much of Blue Bottleโ€™s motto of simplicity, their espresso menu holds your standard milk drinks, and espresso comes courtesy ofย a La Marzocco FB80. On Saturdays there are roastery tours, and popular food trucks visit outside on a regular basis. As one of the first cafes to open in the Arts District, this spot is more than just a coffee shop–itโ€™s a central neighborhood hang.ย  ย 

Blue Bottle Coffee is located at 582 Mateo Street, Los Angeles. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Dos

Two years ago, Little Tokyoโ€™s Cafe Dulce launched a second location as a pop-up inside ROW DTLA, a former produce market-turned-lifestyle plaza. Sharing space with a few other major boutiques, Dos now serves as a permanent walk-up coffee spot for those in between shopping or grabbing a bite to eat at the weekly Sunday Smorgasburg. Like Cafe Dulceโ€™s original location, Dos is also keen on design and branding, keeping everything crisp and eye-grabbingโ€”from sugary cereal-topped donuts to their interior design and drink presentation in beer goblets and mason jars. The cafe ventures into the same style of the Arts Districtโ€™s colorful street art, with painted murals from Annie Seo and Steven Daily. The menu has a wonderfully overwhelming amount to take in, from its drink selections to large array of sweets and sandwiches. Dos serves Heart Coffee Roastersย from a snazzy three-group Slayer for classic espresso drinks and also does pour-overs. Additionally, Cafe Dulce lives up to its name, and the menu is jam-packed with sweet beverages like the Vietnamese iced coffee, the dulce latte (a latte with a shot of condensed milk), a blueberry matcha latte, and more. Itโ€™d be a crime to come to Dos and not order a donut, tooโ€”lines regularly jam the registers, with customers clamoring for green roti and Oreo flavors.

Dos is located atย 777 S Alameda St. #150, Los Angeles. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Tartine Manufactory

The Bay Area seems more ready than ever to make a landing in LA. Following Mr. Holmes Bakery and Blue Bottleโ€™s successful inceptions comes the wildly popular Tartine Manufactory, which will soon occupy space in the former American Apparel Warehouse and in ROW DTLA. The massive compound will be an all-encompassing temple for bread baking, pastry making, coffee, and food prepโ€”at 40,000-square-feet, the complex will also have two restaurant spaces and a market. While Tartineโ€™s Coffee Manufactory keeps it simple at the moment by offering one single-origin, one blend, and one decaf roast at a time, their new massive roastery, with 120-kilogram Probats and an upstairs coffee lab, should allow them to offer more roasts in the future. According to Bloomberg Pursuits, theyโ€™ll also be working with chefs on custom-made blends.

Tartine Manufactory is located atย 757 Alameda St, Los Angeles. Visit their official website and follow them onย Twitter and Instagram.

Verve Coffee Roasters

Coming soon, Verve will continue its own Southern California invasion with a fourth location and second LA roastery on the corner of Santa Fe and Mateo. Hailing from the shores of Santa Cruz, Verveโ€™s LA cafes serve as equally-sleek additions to their Northern California shops, with light wooden counters, teal and navy tiling, and fresh succulents that line the shelves between bags of freshly roasted coffee (Downtown LAโ€™s location is packed with its own greenhouse of plants that line the walls and ceilings of the outdoor patio). Nearly all the cafes work with high-end equipment like four-group Kees van der Westen Spirits and Modbar automatic pour-overs, and will likely be continuing to fuel the cityโ€™s love for pressed juice with Juice Served Here and flights of pressed juice. In addition to their simple coffee and curated tea menu, there will also be food at this location, as they are currently testing the waters with a simple savory menu of sandwiches and salads at their Melrose space.

Verve Coffee is located at the corner of Santa Fe and Mateo. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Cognoscenti Coffee

While not directly within the Arts District parameters, its proximity to the neighborhood calls for a quick peep at one of the original roasters in LA. An architect-turned-barista, founder and coffee legend Yeekai Lim opened the original Cognoscenti location as a pop-up in Eagle Rock, and has been a fundamental figure in mentoring many other cafe owners we see today, like Jack Benjakul of Endorffeine in Chinatown. Cognoscenti keeps it simple at their third and newest location on San Julian in the Fashion District. The cafe is clean and spacious with high-vaulted ceilings, cement floors and walls, and large glass windows, which light the space naturally and keep its warehouse vibe alive. Their simple menu includes three different personal roasts for pour-over (two single origins and a blend) that are auto-brewed with Marco SP9s, and milk drinks that are steamed on Modbar. In addition to teas, you can also cool off with some of the sweeter seasonal specials like affogatos, milkshakes, and a ginger tonic. Thanks to Limโ€™s previous ties with Proof, the shopโ€™s food menu has some of the Atwater Village bakeryโ€™s sought-after treats, like croissants and currant scones, while small breakfast items like egg sandwiches and yogurt parfaits serve to truly fill your belly.

Cognoscenti Coffee is located atย 1118 San Julian St, Los Angeles. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Katrina Yentch is a Sprudge contributor based in Los Angeles. Read more Katrina Yentch on Sprudge.

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