Handles Coffee – LA

There’s no longer anything inherently cool about either coffee or coffee shops: To the extent third wave cafes were once hip places to work or hang out with friends, Starbucks’ ongoing rot as a “third place” killed that vibe for most people. In 2024, the first U.S. outpost of South Korean coffee shop Camel began to bring the cool vibe back in Los Angeles’s Silver Lake neighborhood – then, after a split from the Korean company, went independent and rebranded as Handles Coffee in August 2025. From its deserty color scheme and casual, handwritten-styled font choices to a 1970s/1980s retro interior design, the old school cool energy is super strong here – as are the coffee and tea.

The Handles Latte atypically (and wonderfully) mixes espresso, chocolate, and orange flavors, while Handles Coffee and Handles Matcha distinctively mix either espresso or green tea with both milk and sweet cream. You’re either told to enjoy the cream separately as a distinct layer, or mix it in depending on the drink, creating interestingly silky textures and variations in flavor. The drinks are delicious, but finished quickly enough that on each of our visits, we wish we had ordered more.

A small selection of pastries are also available for purchase on a first-come, first-served basis, and start to run out before the lunch hour arrives. The croissants are super flaky, and its sweet items (including kouign ammans) are Korean-style “not too sweet.”