Harun Coffee

Coffee, espresso, and Keith Corbin's biscuits

Ethiopian beans set the terms at Harun Coffee, a Leimert Park coffee shop, which works as a cultural hub as much as a caffeine stop. The programme nods to coffee’s African origins and treats the cup as a gathering ritual drawn from Ethiopia, Morocco and Egypt. Its co-owners, one of them a former music executive, built it to reflect Leimert Park’s African roots through coffee, art, food and conversation.

The expanded food menu comes from Keith Corbin, chef-owner of Alta Adams in West Adams. His daytime anchor is the flaky buttermilk biscuit, served savory with house-smoked salmon or sweet with whipped cardamom butter and seasonal citrus jam. There is also a sausage and egg biscuit with fig jam, while evenings add tamarind-glazed nuts and a brown-butter coffee cake built from a 1954 Los Angeles Unified School District recipe once served to students and staff.

A casual Los Angeles stop with a second life after dark

Harun fits Los Angeles as a casual coffee stop, but Leimert Park gives it a sharper role. The neighborhood is often called Africatown or Little Africa, and Harun’s identity ties to Black culture, commercial revitalization and spaces built for slowing down. After a 2024 closure, the café reopened with a redesign that goes well beyond standard counter service.

By day, expect coffee, teas, smoothies, iced coffee, cold brew, matcha chai, vegan donuts and biscuit-driven breakfast, with the coffee running smooth rather than bitter and the matcha chai praised for its balance. By evening the room shifts into an after-dark cultural space, with zero-proof drinks such as seasonal tonics using makrut lime leaf, oleo saccharum and seamoss. A shelf of Harun merchandise hides a listening lounge in rich eggplant tones, with plush carpet and a stage for local acts such as Terrace Martin. There is also a gallery for emerging Black artists, and the café has hosted free panels with entertainers and influencers.

Order the sausage and egg biscuit with fig jam first

Start with the sausage and egg biscuit with fig jam, the clearest savory signature on the daytime menu. To stay closer to Corbin’s Alta Adams influence, order the buttermilk biscuits with house-smoked salmon, or with whipped cardamom butter and seasonal citrus jam. The biscuit format is the core food idea: compact, breakfast-friendly and natural beside Ethiopian-bean coffee rather than part of a restaurant progression.

For something sweet, look for the brown-butter coffee cake, keyed to that 1954 school-district recipe rather than a generic café loaf. Tamarind-glazed nuts sit on the evening bar-bite side and match the listening-room direction of the reopened space. Drinks still anchor on coffee, while cold brew, iced coffee, teas, smoothies, matcha chai and mocktails broaden the order. Read Harun through that combination: Ethiopian coffee, Corbin’s biscuits, Black art, merch, panels and music inside one Leimert Park gathering place.