Andante

House-roasted coffee, poured as espresso and pour-over, with a scratch pastry programme built to sit beside it.

A roastery that kept its own café

Andante Coffee Roasters roasts what it pours, which is the first thing to know about it. The flagship opened in Beverly Grove in October 2013, in the space that had been Buzz Coffee 21, tying the corner to an older layer of the neighbourhood's coffee culture. From the start it was both roaster and café rather than a counter serving somebody else's beans, and the identity has stayed there: in-house roasting, and a room built to show what that roasting can do. Pour-over, espresso drinks, tea, juices and scratch pastries make up the Beverly Grove menu, and the name has since spread across several Los Angeles neighbourhoods.

A casual stop, not a formal plan

It works best as a daytime specialty-coffee stop with enough craft behind the counter to reward a considered order. Beverly Grove is the fullest expression, pairing coffee with tea, juices and pastry. The Echo Park room is more bar-focused, where espresso and brewed-coffee preparation are the point of the space, while the downtown branch takes a minimalist line and reads as a calmer pause in the middle of the city for workers, residents and anyone passing through. The beverage programme rests on the company's own roasting rather than a rotating guest-roaster model, with pour-over adding a slower, more tasting-oriented lane and espresso covering the classic milk-and-coffee side.

Order the cold brew, then choose a pastry

Cold brew sits naturally at a café built around its own roast in several formats, and it is the easy first order on a warm afternoon. For a more classic read, take an espresso drink; for the slowest and most revealing one, order the pour-over and let the roast show without milk in the way. Tea is on the Beverly Grove menu for anyone stepping away from coffee, and the juices have been part of the line-up since the beginning. On the food side, the scratch pastry programme was part of the original model rather than a later addition, with pastries served alongside coffee and juices from the opening. Individual bakes change, so the sensible approach is to read the case and let the pastry follow the drink.