Go Get Em Tiger

House-roasted coffee and a real kitchen

The coffee here is roasted by the business itself, seasonal and West Coast in style, which is the first thing separating this counter from a café buying beans in. The espresso side runs the classics, lattes, cappuccinos and cortados, alongside cold brew, matcha and a rotation of flavoured specialty drinks that turns over more often than the espresso menu does.

Behind the counter sits a full kitchen rather than a pastry case, so brunch runs all day: breakfast plates, sandwiches, and a menu with vegan options built into it rather than offered as substitutions. Baristas and kitchen share one daytime flow, so coffee, matcha, tea and food all land in the same order.

The Culver City room

The shop occupies the One Culver Building on the neighbourhood's daytime dining corridor, and it is a purpose-built branch with its own kitchen, coffee programme and seating rather than a coffee counter parked inside someone else's restaurant. The room is sunny and modern, with tables indoors and out, and it absorbs a five-minute coffee and a two-hour sit equally well. Nothing here is borrowed: the coffee programme, the kitchen and the seating were built to work together rather than squeezed into a room already doing something else, and that shows in how the place handles a full morning rush.

Where it came from, and what to order

The business began as G&B Coffee at Grand Central Market in May 2013, with the first Go Get Em Tiger following in Larchmont Village a month later. Culver City is one of a spread of Los Angeles rooms that now takes in Larchmont, Los Feliz, Highland Park, The ROW DTLA, West Hollywood and Santa Monica, all of them drawing on the same roasting operation and the same seasonal list.

Order the house coffee straight first, as espresso or filter, because it is roasted in-house and it is the clearest measure of the place. A cortado is the middle path when you want milk without volume, and the matcha holds up if coffee is not the point of the visit. Then eat. The all-day brunch is what makes this address work better than a minimalist espresso bar, so it is worth arriving hungry rather than treating the stop as a coffee run.