Coffee Tomo

Viewed solely as a culinary destination, Culver Plaza has been one of Irvine’s most impressive venues for years, serving as home to regionally top Chinese restaurants (Sam Woo, Meizhou Dongpo), very good Korean restaurants (All That Shabu, All That Barbecue), and 99 Ranch Market, to name just a few. While many of those tenants are large businesses, one side of the plaza is dedicated to small restaurants, and Coffee Tomo was one of them.

Although Coffee Tomo produced the expected array of hot coffee drinks, ranging from espressos to lattes and mochas, it placed a premium (in the Starbucks era) on hand-crafting each drink to order, using slower drip processes to make its hot drinks. In addition to quality teas, it also leaned on Japanese ingredients including red bean and sweet potato, for atypical lattes, and produced colorful cold drinks such as the Blue Ocean refresher, butterfly lychee, and lemonade shown here. Homemade pretezels in various flavors, as well as a small number of pastries, toasts, and bagels were also offered.

After roughly 10 years in business, Coffee Tomo’s Irvine location closed in 2024; staffing had remained lean for years. A Los Angeles location in Sawtelle with the same branding remains open at the time of writing.