True Love Coffee

Lee Lizotte cups and sample-roasts every lot before he will commit a production batch, which is more process than a cafe this young usually bothers with. Eighteen wholesale accounts have decided it is worth buying, Sqirl among them — the roasting reputation arrived well before the room did.

• Take-home single origins
• Mornings on the turf patio
• Banana bread with a latte
• A browse through Freenote next door

All of it is roasted in San Juan Capistrano under founder and head roaster Lee Lizotte, sourced through importer Hacea Coffee Source — the range tops out with an Ecuador La Noria Gesha from the ChocoVilcaMundo cooperative, credited with first place in the 2023 Cup of Excellence. Product pages print farm, varietal and process, but carry a roast-level selector where a roast date would go.

True Love shares one small unit with Freenote Clothing, so the cafe’s own surfaces stay modest and deliberate: plain painted walls with a die-cut heart sign, a wood bar with open shelving, and a mural commissioned from Miranda Moore. The good seat is the enclosed patio out back — red metal chairs on squares of turf, slat fencing and potted palms, string lights under the plaza’s stucco columns.