Smoking Tiger Coffee Lab

In 2019, a stylish independent bakery cafe opened in Buena Park under the name Smoking Tiger Bread and Coffee, continuing the city’s Source-era trend of importing and adapting Korean culinary influences for a local audience. As of 2025, the Smoking Tiger brand exists across three overlapping concepts spanning northern Orange County and southern LA County: The original (now “Coffee and Bread”) in Buena Park, “Bread Factories” producing pastries, breads, and sandwiches in Cerritos , and “Coffee Labs” focused on drinks in Brea, Gardena, San Gabriel, Whittier, and in July 2025, Garden Grove (shown here).

The Smoking Tiger name comes from the opening phrase of classic Korean folktales (“once upon a time, back when tigers used to smoke”), and appears in cute, retro-styled branding as Tim, a cartoony tiger with a pipe. This is the rare young restaurant chain that has the visual identity skills to pull off merchandise people would care to own regardless of its food and drinks, and at its Coffee Labs, it’s actively advertising Smoking Tiger Apparel on drink sleeves – hats, shirts, cups, tumblers, and posters that are surely only the beginning for this brand.

Of the three Smoking Tiger variants, Coffee Lab turns out to be the smallest and simplest – sporting only a small fraction of the pastries sold at other locations – though its excellent drinks wind up standing out as a result. A more or less permanent TV-based menu hanging on the wall spotlights Coffee Lab’s 20 standard drinks – drip, cold brew, and milk-laden coffees; espresso lattes with brown sugar, cinnamon-hazelnut, vanilla-banana, or corn flavors; matcha, hojicha, and strawberry matcha milk or iced (granita) drinks; and “non-coffee” rice latte, chai latte, pineapple jasmine tea, and yuzu sparkling lemonade drinks. When you reach the counter, you’ll also find a second TV menu with several seasonal drinks including strawberry and peach coffee and tea options, as well as lists of current espresso beans and teas offered in either hot or iced forms. Prices vary from $4 to $7 for most of these drinks, and $7.75 to $8.50 for granitas. A handful of canned Korean drinks are also available at lower prices from a Tiger Convenience fridge at the front counter, along with bags of coffee beans and boxes of tea. (Unlike other Smoking Tigers we’ve visited, indoor seating at the Garden Grove location is minimal – a handful of tables and chairs – but an outdoor patio roughly doubles the capacity to a couple of dozen seats.)