10 Speed Coffee Sawtelle

Espresso first, then a pastry or the breakfast burrito: that is the working order at 10 Speed Coffee Sawtelle. The shop is the Sawtelle Japantown branch of 10 Speed Coffee, opened at the end of 2023 as the group's third café after Santa Monica and Calabasas, and it carries the brand's cycling identity onto one of the Westside's busiest food streets.

A cyclist's café rather than a generic counter

The name nods to the classic 10-speed bicycle, and the Sawtelle shop carries that language through its decor and its pace. Bike-themed pieces run through the room, tying the café to Los Angeles cycling culture instead of a house style borrowed from somewhere else. The framing is espresso, movement and Westside energy, a narrower idea than most neighborhood coffee bars work with, and it gives the counter a point of view before the first cup lands.

The rooms in Santa Monica and Calabasas run on the same idea, so this branch is a translation of an existing café onto a much busier street rather than a one-off concept built for the block.

The Sawtelle Japantown setting

The café occupies the ground floor of The SW, a residential building on Sawtelle Boulevard, which places it inside one of the densest eating corridors on the Westside. Sawtelle Japantown supplies the context: ramen counters, dessert shops and a steady stream of people moving between apartments, errands and meals. The shop serves that street morning, noon and night, so it functions as a routine rather than a destination.

The position shapes who turns up. Neighborhood regulars, people waiting on a table further up the block and anyone crossing between the two all use the same counter, and the room is built to absorb them.

Order the breakfast burrito first

The breakfast burrito is the clearest food order here, named alongside the coffee and the pastry case. It gives the shop more range than a pastry-only counter, and it is the reason to arrive hungry rather than merely uncaffeinated.

On drinks, this is a specialty coffee shop with espresso at the center, so a straight shot or a milk drink is the honest read on the bar, with matcha and seasonal drinks alongside. Treat the pastries as support rather than the headline: coffee or espresso, the breakfast burrito, and whatever the case is holding that morning.