Lynx Coffee

Arian Behboodi kept stopping by the coffee shop where Jared Sielski worked during the WFH Covid years, and Sielski started slipping him better beans off the clock. They bet the San Fernando Valley was underserved for real specialty coffee and built Lynx to fix that, opening in Sherman Oaks in early 2025.

• Tasting flights
• A quick exceptional cup
• A coffee date
• Treating a visitor

Roasts in-house

Lynx is a multi-roaster bar, not a house roastery, despite listing itself that way on file. It self-describes as a 'Specialty Multi-Roaster' and pours guest coffees like Prodigal Coffee out of Boulder, CO, with single-origins rotating through in limited batches as either espresso or hand brew. Matcha runs on the same standard: Kettl's single-origin Hinata, a Yame, Fukuoka matcha from the Yamaguchi family, anchors the shop's own named drink.

An obsessive in-house roaster working with direct-trade single origins and ceremonial-grade matcha. Baristas smell individual beans before brewing, which is roughly the level of fuss the whole bar runs on.

Precision over speed is the whole ethos here: drinks are dialed with laboratory care, and the bar would rather keep you waiting than hand over something it has not checked.

The founders took over an empty retail shell that had no plumbing or power built for a cafe and ran both in from scratch. The counter is laid out in three tiers, an idea borrowed from French kitchen stations, so each barista works a set position without crossing paths and people waiting for drinks can watch the whole process. What's left is a small, clean room that fills up fast: a short bar-top counter, limited seating inside, and outdoor seating that catches the overflow when the line runs out the door.

• three-tier counter
• French kitchen layout
• compact storefront
• self-built out
• outdoor overflow seating