Stereoscope Coffee

Leif Sung An and Clifford Park started Stereoscope Coffee in 2013, and An, a certified Q-grader, has said he wants each coffee to taste distinctive enough that people notice the difference cup to cup. That shows in a lineup built almost entirely on light-roast, single-farm lots.

• Tasting flights
• A quick excellent cup
• Focus & quiet calls
• A date

Roasts in-house

Stereoscope roasts everything in-house on a Probat P12 in a 2,500-square-foot Arts District warehouse and carries no guest roasters. The current lineup leans light-roast, washed or anaerobic-processed single origins from named farms and co-ops in Honduras, Burundi, Costa Rica, and Colombia's Huila region, alongside three in-house blends and a water-processed Peru decaf.

Founded by Q-graders, Stereoscope roasts its own single origins and dials the bar around espresso, where a shot is expected to taste of one farm.

An ultra-modern bar where every variable from sourcing to extraction gets argued over, and the shot is where the argument lands.

This shop sits on the ground floor of AVA Hollywood, a residential building on Santa Monica Blvd, not a standalone storefront. Reviews describe it as spacious with high ceilings, quiet enough to work in, and deliberate in its details, down to the Poursteady machine turning out hot and iced pour-overs behind the bar. It has a sunny outdoor patio, unlike Stereoscope's Echo Park shop, which doesn't. No designer is publicly credited for this specific location; Stereoscope's Newport Beach cafe was designed by Land Design Studio's Andrew Lindley and Wick Architecture's David Wick, but that credit hasn't been confirmed here.

• minimalist
• ground-floor retail
• high ceilings
• spacious
• quiet
• outdoor patio
• residential building