10 of the best pumpkin spice lattes and seasonal drinks to sip this fall
Call it basic, or call it one of the most brilliant marketing ploys the coffee world has ever seen. Heralding fall with the same gusto as an afternoon of apple picking — which does indeed exist within driving distance of L.A. — the pumpkin spice latte is back.
The Starbucks icon reprised its reign Aug. 22, but independent L.A. coffee shops are currently turning out some of their own, more delicious takes. From Chinatown to Santa Monica City, mom-and-pop cafes are building on the PSL — some even juicing fresh pumpkins, simmering small batches of kabocha or hand-grinding spices.
To many, the drink — often featuring the warming spices of pumpkin pie — has long signaled the start of autumn. Darren La Borie of Eagle Rock and Silver Lake coffee shops Muddy Paw is in his ninth or 10th year of offering a pumpkin spice latte made from real pumpkin, not store-bought syrup. “If you ask me, my biggest problem with the whole pumpkin spice craze, it’s that people say, ‘Oh, we can put [the flavor] in a syrup,’” he said. “I’m like, ‘That’s just not the same.’ There’s so much to it.”
Others have only just recently started to explore PSL territory. Dayglow’s Tohm Ifergan doesn’t normally offer pumpkin spice at his cafes in Silver Lake, Larchmont and West Hollywood. But with new Dayglow outposts in Chicago and New York, where the seasons’ changes are felt more dramatically, he’s spent more time thinking about seasonal drinks and especially the pumpkin spice latte as we head into fall. So this year, he’s combining pumpkin with apple cider and espresso.
“I’ve always thought that pumpkin is such a versatile ingredient,” he said.
In East L.A., a black-metal-themed coffee stand is diving into the season with its first ever pumpkin spice latte, made using whole roasted pumpkins. Others are replacing the gourd with sweet potatoes.
“In the beginning I kind of turned my nose up at stuff like that,” said Clark Street founder Zack Hall, now in his third year of pumpkin spice offerings. “It took me a while to come around, but now it’s just fun. The staff making them has fun, the customers coming in have fun with it.”
Be Bright
The Las begin their process by cold-pressing the juice of fresh, peeled pumpkin, sweetened with demerara sugar for an almost molasses-like flavor. Two varieties of cinnamon — one a brittle cinnamon bark sourced from Vietnam, the other a variety from Indonesia — are combined for complexity, then added to the pumpkin juice and sugar as it simmers. Once it’s reduced by roughly half its volume, it’s strained multiple times, each time through a finer sieve. Be Bright’s pumpkin pie latte can be served with the cafe’s signature “cold foam,” a creamy whipped topping, and gets topped with crushed graham cracker, while a cold-brew option gets topped with a cold foam that also uses the pumpkin syrup. They round out a fall menu that includes a Rooted Fare black sesame crunch mocha; a campfire-inspired cappuccino with maple, vanilla and smoked sea salt; a spiced apple espresso cream soda topped with cold foam; and a sparkling cider beverage made with cascara syrup and tonic water.
Clark Street
Hall didn’t stop at lattes. The baker’s pumpkin spice white chocolate cookies are studded with Valrhona white chocolate, which gives the cookies an almost cream-cheese-like gooey center. Find the lattes and the cookies at all four Clark Street locations.
Coffee for Sasquatch
Ackad’s classic-leaning pumpkin spice latte combines pumpkin pie seasoning with pureed organic pumpkin straight in the cup with espresso and milk, and it’s sweetened with maple and dusted with spice for extra flourish. It’s joined by a new take on green tea — a spiced orange honey matcha — plus a miso caramel latte and, for the cold-brew lovers, a version topped with a thick layer of maple cold foam.
Dayglow
“The addition of pumpkin just made more sense,” he said. “I think apple and pumpkin work really well together, but you don’t see it often.”
Ifergan’s is a refreshing take on the pumpkin spice latte in more ways than one. It’s a little like an Einsp?nner, topped with pumpkin cream, but it’s layered below: At the base is a house-made crisp apple cider that’s reduced to a syrup, which becomes creamy with the addition of oat milk. The next layer features an on-theme espresso: Fresh apple ferments along with the coffee cherries at origin, which adds a bright, fruity flavor to the beans. The top cream involves pumpkin puree, a range of spices and brown sugar. “[The drink] is actually quite simple,” Ifergan said, “but I think it’s all the little elements that make it nice.”
Goodboybob
Muddy Paw Coffee
Muddy Paw’s PSL is available hot or iced, and in both, freshly ground spices like cardamom and cinnamon — similar to a classic pumpkin pie spice blend — make their way into organic pumpkin puree, which is sweetened by brown sugar and a hint of agave. The lattes are finished with a sprinkling of the cafe’s custom spice blend, which includes a pinch of black pepper for bite. This year the cafes also are serving a pumpkin spice chai, which uses the from-scratch pumpkin-spice mixture and can be ordered hot or cold. The drinks can be enjoyed with baked goods and other themed snacks made by a range of local bakers: pumpkin bread, gluten-free pumpkin maple scones, pumpkin doughnuts and more.
Mystyx Kafe
“We’re so busy sometimes, being back and forth, that we hardly get to play with our flavors,” said Anguiano, who’s renovating their full, currently closed Boyle Heights cafe. “People kept asking for it every year and we never had it, so finally we were like, ‘OK, let’s just do it.’”
Anguiano roasts small fresh pumpkins until the flesh pulls easily from the skin for a deep, earthy flavor, then blends it with nutmeg, cinnamon and other baking spices. For a smoother and richer consistency, he adds a bit of cream, then adds an ample squirt of the sauce into freshly pulled lattes on the sidewalk. It’s available hot or iced, and will run until Halloween. Anguiano and Castillo hope to relaunch the full Mystyx Kafe at 2308 E. 1st St. by the end of the year. Until then, there’s pumpkin spice at the corner near Superior Grocers.
Nonna Mercato
Recreational Coffee
Thank You Coffee
“We don’t really eat pumpkin, but we eat a lot of kabocha,” said co-owner Jonathan Yang. “My wife, Julia, and I love kabocha but not all people know it, and we realized this is a neat way to highlight that kabocha is pretty much like a Japanese pumpkin.”
Thank You Coffee’s KSL derives its chief flavors from a blend of toasted spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom and ginger, which are turned into a syrup with a combination of white and dark brown sugars and ginger bitters; it all gets steeped and strained. Yang steams fresh kabocha squash, then purees it and incorporates it into the spice syrup, adding depth without detracting from the spices, he says. In both locations, a hint of coconut condensed milk is added to the lattes — a nod to the ingredient often found in pumpkin pie — and they’re dusted with kinako, a roasted soybean flour, for added earthiness and a pie-crust effect. This year they’re adding another fall-inspired drink to the menu at both locations: a persimmon-and-apple latte that’s meant to evoke coziness and comfort throughout the season.
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