Ayêr Coffee Roasters
In Tustin, a small, high-quality Vietnamese coffee and matcha shop with Korean salt bread
Depending on your appetite for romanticizing coffee shops, there could be a lot to say about Ayêr Coffee Roasters (pronounced “air”), or much less. Viewed objectively, Ayêr is a very, very simple place with an equally simple menu: two sides of a laminated piece of card stock, half coffee drinks ($4.50 to $7), half matchas ($7 to $9), with a handful of “non-caffeinated” (mango or coconut pandan milks, $5 to $7.50) and “other tea” (hojicha, $7 to $7.50) options. A single snack, “signature Korean salt bread” ($4.50), is available as an accompaniment, and that’s it – yet Ayêr spawns fairly long lines out the door, only partially because almost all of the small shop’s space is devoted to making and selling rather than seating.
That’s because Ayêr is an example of close to excellent execution. Descriibing itself as “rooted in Vietnamese tradition and infused with Korean café culture,” its Vietnamese coffee bases are strong, balanced by their creamy foam tops, and its selections of flavors and matcha variants are streamlined to deliver joy. Even a fairly basic Salted Saigon ($6.50) – salted vanilla cream top, iced coffee, and milk – was about as ideally bold and sweet as anything we’ve enjoyed in Vietnam, while a Banana Coffee ($7) lived out its name from top to bottom: banana cream, sliced banana coins, toffee/almond bits, and more of that Vietnamese coffee.
Fruit drinks, such as a Strawberry Coffee ($6.50), arrive as multiple layers, thick with puree on the bottom, oat milk in the center, and coffee on top; mixing is essential for the full effect. Pumpkin is available seasonally, with blueberry, coconut, Spanish (cinnamon), and black versions available year-round.
Ayêr’s matcha drinks are similarly built, and most are $7.50 or less; we went with the most complex Matcha Three ($9), the third in a series of drinks that begins with a $7 “one” (matcha latte/oat milk/vanilla syrup), grows to “two” (adding salted matcha vanilla cream), then completes as “three” with a scoop of matcha sorbet. Served with a straw and a spoon, Matcha Three can’t help but taste like fairly strong matcha and cream throughout, though its complex mix of salted cream, solid sorbet, and liquid tea makes for an atypically fun drinking and light eating experience. Other versions with fruit (strawberry, mango, blueberry, banana, pumpkin) generally match their coffee variants.
All of that having been said, Ayêr’s salt bread isn’t amazing. While it looks nearly perfect – cosmetically very similar to versions we’ve had in Korea and elsewhere locally, such as Seed & Water – it’s served at roughly room temperature, perhaps lightly refrigerated beforehand, rather than warm, and more salty than buttery. Nice salt crystals on top made virtually every bite tasty, though. Ayêr’s drinks are so strong that we’d hoped everything would be equivalent; as a young and seemingly thriving business, it will likely have both time and opportunity to continue improving.
Stats
Price: $
Service: Counter
Open Since: July 2025
Address
17292 McFadden Ave. #C
Tustin, CA 92780
Instagram: @ayercoffee