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Daily Dish

Caffeine fix: CoffeeBar opens on Spring Street

By Betty HallockDeputy Food Editor 
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The coffee options for loft dwellers on Spring Street have expanded with the opening of CoffeeBar, a 2,000-square-foot cafe that debuted last week just a couple of doors down from downtown favorite Spring for Coffee.

Owners Michael Leko and Will Shamlian are the partners behind Spring Street Bar on the same block and Library Bar and the forthcoming Pizzeria Urbano at 6th and Hope streets. CoffeeBar’s design seems to take more than one cue from the three Intelligentsia shops in L.A., with a large central barista station, both communal seating and cafe tables, and blue tile and metalwork accents. Besides a Synesso three-group espresso machine, there’s an $18,000 Slayer -- the new Seattle-built machine introduced last year -- that I’ve yet to see in use at CoffeeBar.

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There’s also a pourover bar. Beans come from a rotating roster of roasters: Vivace and Vita from Seattle and Noble Coffee Roasting from Ashland, Ore., for example. According to Downtown News, CoffeeBar consultant Jared Mockli avoided sourcing the same beans that Spring for Coffee carries.

‘They’re the friendly competition,’ says one Spring for Coffee barista.

-- Betty Hallock

CoffeeBar, 600 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, www.coffeebarla.com; Spring for Coffee, 548 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, www.springforcoffee.com.

Daily Dish
Betty Hallock

Betty Hallock is deputy Food editor at the Los Angeles Times. She has co-written four cookbooks, including “Bäco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles,” “Amá: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen” and “Baking at République.” She started her journalism career at the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American in New York, worked on the L.A. Times’ Business desk, and was interim food editor at Los Angeles Magazine. Hallock also helped launch a food and nutrition vertical for wellness app RoundGlass. She’s a graduate of UCLA and New York University.

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