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Chocolate with house spices and espresso, served hot or cold.
Pão de Queijo (3)
Brazilian cheese bread, three pieces to an order.
Curator’s note
Alex Kipling took his first coffee job at 17, and in 2015 he moved to São Paulo to help open the first Isso é Café, spending weekends picking and processing cherries on nearby farms. Back in Los Angeles he opened this CalEdison lobby bar for Nossa Familia in 2017, while he worked for the Portland roaster, and in April 2022 it reopened as the second Aquarela, the all-Brazil company he now runs with Otávio Shih.
The Coffee
The coffee is roasted on two San Franciscans at separate sites, a 2.5-kilo machine for nano and small microlots and a 10-kilo for larger batches. In the lobby the counter pours espresso drinks, the Batida and tropical smoothies.
- Amilton Peixoto - Red Catuaí, "Lona" Fermentation
Brazil, Campo dos Vertentes, Minas Gerais
- Varietals
- Red Catuaí
- Process
- Lona fermentation: small lots wrapped in tarp for a slow aerobic fermentation, pulp removed after
- Producer
- Amilton Peixoto, Peixoto Family
chocolate · melon · yellow and red fruits · creamy and clean body
- The Peixoto Family - Mundo Novo, Natural
Brazil, Minas Gerais
- Varietals
- Mundo Novo
- Process
- Natural
- Producer
- Neide Peixoto, with daughter Lauriel and brother-in-law Joaquim
Tootsie Roll · Cinnamon/Cardamom · Yellow Raisin · Pecan-Pie sweetness
- Tudo de Bom - Espresso and Filter Blend
Brazil
- Process
- Natural, Pulped and Anaerobic processes
Milk Chocolate · Cherry · Molasses · Sweet
The Vibe
Aquarela pours out of the two-story lobby of the CalEdison, the 1931 Art Deco tower built as the Southern California Edison Company Building and among the first in the western US heated and cooled entirely by electricity. The bar sits under a thirty-foot coffered ceiling in a lobby of at least seventeen kinds of marble, with Hugo Ballin's mural Power in the same hall.
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