Check-ins
Come here for
Document Cold
Cold brew steeped with chicory, cut with milk and a touch of Grade A maple syrup, the shop's best-known drink, with the maple traced to Howrigan Family Farms in Vermont.
Ham and cheese croissant
A ham-and-cheese croissant from the pastry case ($4).
Curator’s note
Sojung Kwon and Byoungok Koh are artists, not coffee people, and the plan was a shared studio until the money pushed them toward coffee; they named the place for their own habit of documenting everything. More than a decade after opening in Koreatown in 2014, it still doubles as a working studio and gallery, and the wall is covered in photos the owners took of their regulars, not paid models.
The Coffee
Document runs a guest-roaster program, never a house roast. Phil & Sebastian out of Calgary has been in the rotation since 2014, and Ceremony Coffee out of Baltimore is the current second roaster. Coffee runs through pour-over, straight espresso, and Kyoto-style slow-drip cold brew towers, with beans drawn from Central and South America and Ethiopia.
- Ethiopia Guji
Ethiopia, Guji
stone fruit · jasmine
The Vibe
Kwon and Koh took a former art gallery near the Wiltern and did everything themselves: no architect, no design firm. Concrete floors, high ceilings, a dark grey front door, and light fixtures built out of repurposed buckets. One wall is covered floor to ceiling in portraits the owners shot themselves of regular customers, not models. Seating tops out around ten stools, so most of the room is really about the wall and the counter. The back door opens onto the parking lot, and that wall has become its own photo stop.
Photos
Add a photoSomewhere to Work
People
- Power outlets
- Restrooms
- Food menu
- Patio / outdoor seating
- Kid-friendly
- Wheelchair accessible
- Locally owned
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