Cake If there is any place in the entirety of God’s Green Earth that I would not want to be caught dead drinking coffee, it would be in a Quentin Tarantino film. Because, as Jackson O’Brien’s excellent piece on coffee in the films of Quentin Tarantino explains, if you’re drinking coffee, you’re likely to soon be caught. And dead. Coffee is often an inflection point, the last peaceful moment before a harrowing, and often violent, series of events.
Others, though, may feel more cavalier with their own lives. For them, there is Pam’s Coffy, a new coffee shop in Los Angeles owned by none other than Quentin Tarantino. What could poss-ib-lee go wrong?
As reported by Eater LA, the cafe is attached to the Vista Theater in the Los Feliz neighborhood, which Tarantino also owns. It is named after the 1973 film Coffy, starring Pam Grier, the leading actor in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Per Eater LA, the director bought the 100-year-old theater back in 2021, and Pam’s Coffy is part of the space’s revival. The decor of the cafe is ‘70s-inspired, featuring oversized vintage posters from movies like Coffy and Goliath and the Vampires as well as “an assortment of old-school TVs playing VCRs mostly from the ‘70s.”
The coffee for Pam’s will be provided by Jones Coffee Roasters, who is no stranger to the combination of coffee and film. The roaster has created a custom blend for Pam’s Coffy known as Bold Black Mamba, a reference to the code name of Uma Thurman’s character in the Kill Bill movies.
Food at Pam’s Coffy comes via pastries from LA’s Cake Monkey bakery as well as $5 cereal bowls, “another personal Tarantino touch.”
Currently open everyday until 5:00pm, Pam’s Coffy is planning to expand hours for special events, once they have secured a beer and wine license.
In the pantheon of celebrity-owned coffee enterprises, Tarantino’s Pam’s Coffy is the least likely I am to entertain. (Well, maybe Robert Downey Jr’s Happy Coffee, but this is a close second.) I, for instance, would not visit a truck stop operated by Robert Rodriguez or a hotel run by the Coen Brothers. There are just some places where the warning signs are written across the marquee in big bright lights. In the world of coffee, such a place would have Quentin Tarantino’s name attached to it. Caveat emptor.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
