stay for the audrey hepburn chair :: Caffé Concerto

Continuing on through our LA café binge, we will now revisit the most stylishly decorated one. Caffé Concerto is one of the more popular cafés in the Koreatown area, and they thankfully have their own (very small) parking lot.

As always, the unique touches elevate the café from plain good to really memorable. The biggest points from me come from how they've got an Audrey Hepburn chair! Even the food serves a decorative purpose. All the colors of the macarons in the display case somehow complement each other. The inside of the café is adorned with glass, and has a general color scheme of ivory and dark-colored wooden tones. Imprinted on the mirrors within the café is the Caffé Concerto logo in a holographic reflective material.

I notice that Japanese and Korean cafés tend to lean towards either cute or elegant, but elegant cafés will always have a touch of cute, and vice versa. The elegant ones usually have sort of a European theme with an Asian influence. Caffé Concerto is definitely on the side of elegance (with a trendy side, all the desserts are so colorful), but cute touches can be seen in small bits of decor like the stuffed animal ornamental tree on the counter.

We went here once just to pick up a latte in the morning before heading over to explore the Getty Center for the first time. It was so nice inside that we promised ourselves we'd later come back for dessert exploring after dinner.

For after dinner desserts, I got a jasmine macaron and ispahan, which is a macaron filled with fruit jam and cream. It was entirely average, nothing lives up to Ladurée's version. Hannah chose a moscato sabayon, basically various berries in a glass with a cream mixture of vanilla bean, egg yolk, sugar, and wine. Hers was really good!

We had two more green tea lattes.. meaning I had three green tea lattes in this day, from two different cafés, and they all kinda tasted the same. Apparently they're much more plentiful and everywhere than sweet potato lattes are. The process of mixing matcha powder into steamed milk must be kinda standard everywhere.

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Caffé Concerto
610 S Serrano Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90005
(213) 738-0909
Website // Facebook // Insta

majisuka rock and roll :: Café Maji

We could have never gotten here without a car. It's one of those places that you can only get to when you drive to LA, rather than take buses or planes. When you go by public transit, travelling one hour to get to more food places seems like overkill. With a car, it's a part of exploring.

Café Maji is one of the more popular cafés that aren't within LA. Rather, it's situated in a city northeast of LA, called Arcadia. Apparently, Arcadia is where many many rich Asian people live, and they have huge houses and send their kids to private schools, and their kids are expected to go to ivies, jokes my friend (we are also Asian, so don't kill me).
 

The café is especially unique in that it's situated in the corner of a gym! No, don't envision some sweaty, dank gym with cheap memberships. More like a gymnasium from an anime? The bright kind where light comes in, the floors are freshly waxed, and the ceiling is really high up. People seem to do yogalates in this gym. 

You've got to sign in at the gym's front desk, and they've got a sign up sheet especially for the café. Then you go up to the second floor, and there it is, decorated cutely.

Another thing I really loved about it was the bookshelves stacked with awesome reading material. Some cafés have good reading material, but this one had BY FAR, the BEST assortment of it. There were children's picture books, funny books that radiated truth, obscure dreamy magazines full of photo-shoots of pretty models and interviews from oh so independent women saying oh so relatable things, manga in different languages, a good bunch of easily-readable novels... I thought, this is exactly what would keep me coming back here, if I didn't live 300+ miles away.

We sat down next to a bookshelf and shared a bulgogi quesadilla, and I got two drinks because I couldn't pick between them all. I wanted a latte, but some of the other drinks were so nicely presented, as I saw online. I ended up getting a green tea latte and a passionfruit tea lemonade. The latte art was even more adorable in person than it was in pictures, holy crap, it's somehow so fluffy looking. Passionfruit tea lemonade was gorgeous and picturesque but meh tasting, the ice melted too quickly since I forgot to ask for less ice.

A really nice touch added to the drinks is they all come with a cream puff! I think the cream puff is just there for aesthetics, but it's such a nice touch. Small things like this are why I continue to love cafés. They're all special in their own way.

The bulgogi quesadilla, interestingly, fuses the Mexican quesadilla and Korean marinated BBQ beef, called bulgogi. We wondered why such a thing existed after seeing parallels all over the place (bulgogi tacos are also common around Ktown), then researched it, because Hannah is big into researching the world. We found out that Koreatown has a Hispanic majority living within the area that has coexisted with the Korean community for decades, which inspires a cultural intermix that reflects in the food and relations between both groups. I'd always wondered why it seems like the combo of Korean and Mexican food is so popular within foodie circles. It's not just in LA either, trends tend to migrate from LA to the Bay. One of the first and most popular food trucks in the San Jose area was MoGo BBQ, which specializes in Korean-themed burritos. (The quesadilla was great, by the way!)

Recommend Café Maji for those who love reading.

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Café Maji

56 E Duarte Rd, Arcadia, CA

(626) 802-8743
Facebook // Instagram Feed

what's in the honey tea bowl :: Scout Coffee Co.

"What's in the honey tea bowl?" I bet they get that a lot.

On the way back from LA this summer, my friend Hannah and I made our last road trip stop at the halfway point between San Jose and LA: the city of San Luis Obispo. We ended up in the downtown shopping area because we wanted to visit Bubblegum Alley, which is an alley where people come from faaaar and wide to stick their used chewed-up bubblegum on the walls. I think you can't not do that sometime in your life if you want to be able to say your life is complete! It's really really kitschy, and very very roadtrippy, but it was just as much of a must-do as when we went to the ostrich farm and the place where James Dean crashed.

We came for Bubblegum Alley and stumbled upon a popular café in the area, named Scout Coffee Co. The place reminded me of a sunflower turned into a café. The interior was nicely spacious, and the windows let the light shine in to light up the whole café. Even though it was cloudy, the light reached all the way to the back. The warmth of the sunlight streaming through the windows along with the warmer colors used for the walls and counter area made it look inviting.

I thought this café was different-looking in a really airy way, as trendy cafés can often give off a somewhat cold feel, especially when darker colors are used. Scout seems to have a great balance of light and dark. It also has a small bar-like area in the middle, an area with colorful stools surrounding small logs, and regular old chairs plus matching tables, for those who like their preferences when it comes to seating. The space also has a bathroom in the back. A good place to recharge before the rest of our journey home.

I ended up getting two drinks, and we accidentally confused the barista with my getting two drinks then Hannah ordering another. Hannah explained how I always do this, because I like trying drinks ^^; I got a vanilla latte, which I guess is my measuring stick drink for all cafés, and a unique concoction they have called the Honey Tea Bowl.

After asking about the ingredients in the honey tea bowl (and wondering if it was actually served in a bowl), the barista told me it was made up of almond milk, chamomile tea, and honey. If you think about each of those ingredients for a sec, you'll start to feel reeeeeally zen. Any one of those ingredients by themselves can be had before bedtime to make you feel relaxed enough to go to sleep, so what happens when you put them all together? I didn't want to fall asleep at the wheel while driving but it sounded so unique and comforting.. and I really really didn't regret it.

Maybe the vanilla latte kept me awake, while the honey tea bowl gave me a hug while having to drive 150 more miles. Before this, I had no idea how well almond milk goes with tea! Especially chamomile tea. This is a drink that can easily be made at home, but there's hardly anything like the original. They use a special elongated tea bag, so that the tea continues to flavor your drink as you drink it, and doesn't cause all the flavors to stay stuck at the bottom.

The honey tea bowl is my new favorite café drink without coffee in it. I don't know when I'll get to have it again, but the one time I had it was so worth it. Really really recommended!

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Scout Coffee Co.
1130 Garden St, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 
(805) 439-2175
Website // Facebook // Instagram

squishy waffles + squishy log pillows :: Café Korobokgur

Hello world, my name's JoAnn with a capital A. This blog will be used to highlight my café discoveries wherever I travel, since I needed a place to ramble about café details and save my thoughts without having to use Yelp. This blog will also be informative about things that come up while rambling, because we like knowledge.

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My first entry on this blog I've been wanting to create forever will be from when I went to LA this summer with my friend Jessice, and we visited a Korean café called Café Korobokgur. I liked this café the most out of any café I've ever been to, so this is the first entry. I think that their name unpronounceableness adds to the authenticity.

I really love Korean cafés and Japanese cafés, because they tend to have all kinds of lovable whimsical themes that I like, or they're just full of cute stuff without any theme at all. If I had to describe this one, it'd be woodsy married to modern. They had tiny woodsy details intermixed with minimalist decor, like flat and non-flat log pillows, tree-ish hints everywhere, a small elf man logo, and things all over the place from Studio Ghibli movies. Doesn't Totoro remind you of forests? Maybe because forests = calm = Studio Ghibli. Even when terrible things are happening in Ghibli films, there's a sense of calm.

 

I took very many pictures of the interior, that I have yet to upload from my phone, so Instagram collages will have to do for now. The space wasn't so small that it was cramped and not so huge that it was impersonal. This perfection in space size maybe had to do with how much furniture there was in the room. The furniture was spaced out so that you could walk easily between the sitting area (full of tables accommodating different sizes of groups), the bathrooms, the ordering/pickup and coffee-making area, and everything is very perfectly mismatched.

The space was adorned with small details that really added to the atmosphere. There were No Face and Totoro plushies, and various mini Ghibli details in places that you would definitely miss if you didn't look closely. Despite the calmness, you can still feel the chic vibes when you stand next to the British telephone booth and stare at the circular paper lights. They also have men's and women's bathrooms that are marked by girl and boy versions of their elf logo.

From the menu, we ordered the waffle and shared it together, and it was super squishy and pillowy, like a waffle made of clouds and gluten! I wanted to hog it all to myself, but I didn't, which makes me a very good friend. The presentation was amazing, how perfectly aligned the waffles are to the complimentary scoop of vanilla ice cream, waffle condiments, and the useless but decorative sprinkling of powdered chocolate. My friend Nielle told me that the tteokbokki here was really good, but we were way too stuffed from the food whirlwind that came before to have anything other than desserts..

I also tried their vanilla latté, which tasted great in all its artsy presentation, as expected from a hipster-approved coffee source. When I asked for extra sugar, the waiter brought two packets of organic Hawaiian brown sugar out to me on a small square wooden platter, set perfectly aligned on a slightly smaller square brown napkin matching the small square platter, and a special tiny long spoon to stir the extra sugar in with. My brain poked me and went "privilege", but overall this gesture was very nice and caring of the staff. Such good service. ♡

Café Korobokgur uses the IntelligentsiA brand of coffee, which is one of the more popular artisanal coffee brands here in California. It's fair trade, appealing to the hipsters. I won't go on and on about coffee, because I'm a café addict who can't tell coffees apart, and I have no preference. If you want, you can find more about IntelligentsiA coffee from their website, but here's an interesting bit. As Wikipedia notes, the intelligentsia is actually "a social class of people engaged in complex mental labour aimed at guiding or critiquing, or otherwise playing a leadership role in shaping a society's culture and politics. This therefore might include everyone from artists to school teachers, as well as academics, writers, journalists and other hommes de lettres (men of letters)." In a way, it seems they chose the name describing the hipsters and smarty people of the olden days to make a sort of parallel with their current target market.

This place is my absolute favorite café in the world at the moment, and although I've gone to lots of cafés, there's also a lot of cafés I haven't been to. This could change any day. Also, whenever I go to a new great place, I tend to feel like it's the best ever, so I don't think the weight of my favorite is very heavy.

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Café Korobokgur
464 W 8th St, Los Angeles, CA 90005

(213) 388-8818