Caffe Luxxe

Mark Wain and Gary Chau left corporate careers in tech and consulting and opened Caffe Luxxe on Montana Avenue in 2006, on the strength of a single well-made espresso from a trip to Italy. They built it around Italian cafe culture on purpose, down to running it without WiFi so people talk to each other instead of their laptops.

Roasts in-house

Caffe Luxxe roasts its own coffee in-house on Probat machines, small-batch and by hand rather than by computer program, aiming for 90+ point cups. Baristas train a minimum of six months on roasting science and manual machine work before working the bar. The current lineup runs seven house blends alongside two rotating single origins, an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe and a Guatemala Huehuetenango.

Roasting for this neighborhood since 2006, with a classically Italian-leaning espresso and a hand-poured single-origin drip bar.

The room has poured on Montana Avenue since 2006 and has never installed WiFi: it was built for conversation, and the cappuccino is meant to be drunk standing at the counter. It is an elegant European space that decided early what it was for and never revisited the question.

The Montana Ave shop is the original Caffe Luxxe, open since 2006 with its architecture and layout kept mostly as-is. The look is classic European on purpose, built around the same Italian cafe culture that inspired the founders in the first place, down to skipping WiFi so people talk instead of working. LA Times called it a full aesthetic experience, from the bar to the black-clad, latte-art-trained baristas. The brand's packaging, separate from the room itself, uses a signature Italian-sunshine-yellow drawn from Positano, designed by a former Caffe Luxxe barista turned illustrator.

• classic European
• no WiFi
• original 2006 architecture
• sleek coffee bar
• neighborhood flagship
• patio seating