Maméya Coffee Roasters

The wait is the product here: nothing is roasted until somebody orders it, which is how this Kobe roaster has worked since 1995 and how it works now in a Laguna Niguel plaza suite. The brand is Kobe rather than Tokyo, and owner Daisuke N. is firm about that.

All roasting happens in the shop, over an open gas flame, after you order, a 21-coffee retail wall named mostly to country or region, with one lot reaching farm level: Panama SHB EP Boquete Finca La Santa at $19. To drink there, it's $3.50 for drip or $6 for a pour-over.

The room is a small plaza suite worked into something closer to a coffee museum: a pale slat wall, wood-and-black-metal benches, jazz playing, and open shelving of bean canisters over barrels of green coffee at the front. The display is also the menu: you pick a bean off the shelf and it roasts over an open flame while you wait.