La Mill: The Latest Buzz

It isn’t easy to adjust ambitious food to make it go with the extreme flavor profile of this sort of coffee, but Cimarusti is doing his best. The frisée aux lardons, a chicory salad with plenty of Niman Ranch bacon and a runny poached egg, is dressed in a coffee-scented vinaigrette, and the delicious pressed sandwich of piquillo peppers, Spanish chorizo and cheese is made with Farcell, a Catalan cow’s-milk cheese whose rind is traditionally washed with coffee, which gives it a tangy, smoky quality that does in fact go with the bean. The potato-leek soup with clams, a simplified facsimile of Providence’s famous chowder, is spiked with enough bacon to make the coffee pairing work.

But even Cimarusti’s cooking is upstaged by the coffee here. When you order that aged Sumatran peaberry in the Eva Solo, a waitress sets down a willowy carafe encased in tight, zippered neoprene, like a fitted wetsuit on a supermodel, and starts the seconds ticking on an electronic egg timer. When the alarm buzzes, she is already back at the table, undoing the heavy zipper with her long fingers, breaking the thick crust that has formed on the surface of the coffee. She stirs until the grounds settle to the bottom. She flourishes a thin metal-mesh cone that looks like something Jean-Paul Gaultier might have affixed to a bustier a decade ago, and plunges it deep into the murky liquid. A second later, there is clear, limpid coffee in your cup, light-roasted, tart, smelling rather more of fruits and flowers than of whatever it is Starbucks peaberry smells like. It has been explained to you that the Eva Solo method reproduces the experience of cupping, the way that professional roasters taste coffee. All I know is that I have never tasted coffee quite like this before coming to La Mill, winy zippiness accentuated instead of chocolate thunder, and I used to consider myself pretty serious about what I put into my French press. I must be stuck in the second wave. La Mill Coffee Boutique, 1636 Silver Lake Blvd., Silver Lake, (323) 663-4441. Tues.-Sun. 7 a.m.–7 p.m. (Extended dinner hours, including late weekend hours, begin March 18.) No alcohol. Takeout. AE, MC, V. Pastries run $3-$4; savory dishes $12-$16; desserts $8-$9. Recommended dishes: Yukon gold/leek soup; ABLT; cured Tasmanian sea trout.

Anne Fishbein

Unzipped: Hot Eva Solo

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More About

• Anne Fishbein
• Mill Coffee
• Eva Solo
• Food and Cooking
• Coffee

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