MoonGoat Coffee Roasters

In the food service world, it’s obvious when a business not only cares about doing things atypically well, but has the capacity to actually do so in ways customers will notice. A cafe with limited staff and growth ambitions may stick to doing just a few things more or less perfectly, while another flexes its muscles and pushes for expansion. Orange County’s MoonGoat Coffee Roasters is in the latter camp: Founded as a Santa Ana coffee roastery in 2018, MoonGoat expanded to Costa Mesa with its first cafe in 2019, and has since opened locations in Garden Grove, Irvine, and Laguna Beach. In late July 2025, it opened a second and very spacious Costa Mesa cafe called MoonGoat Greenhouse, so named as it overlooks Noguchi Garden (aka California Scenario) in the South Coast Metro neighborhood.

MoonGoat-roasted coffee beans, premium brewing tools, and branded merchandise are available for purchase in addition to freshly made drinks, brunch fare, and a handful of pastries, the latter uniquely presented without a display case at the cash registers. Additionally, signs in the Greenhouse note that every plant in the space can be purchased, just in case you see something you love or want to select as a gift.

On our visit, we ordered both coffees and teas: a banana matcha latte ($8.25), a toasted matcha latte ($6.75), and a masala chai latte with almond milk ($5.75), any of which could easily have gone sideways for different reasons. Instead, the recipes all worked; MoonGoat’s banana matcha drink was one of the best we’ve found anywhere locally – enhanced with banana syrup and banana cold foam, it combined a lightly thickened texture with strong tea and fruit flavors, justifying its unusually high price tag. Intrigued by “toasted matcha” and concerned about the combination of cascara (coffee leaf tea) syrup and hojicha, we found the mix delivered on the promised flavor, with just the right level of unmodified sweetness. Similarly, the chai latte was dusted with spice, ensuring that first and subsequent sips would have a little punch beyond whatever steeping could infuse.