At least once a week, I’ll make the 35-minute roundtrip journey from my house in Echo Park to the Maru in Los Feliz. Instinctually, I know where I’m likely to find parking off Hillhurst and how close the queue of sweatpanted freaks can get to the accountant’s office next door before I drop a “nope” and keep driving.
When I lived in the Arts District, I’d make similar trips to the airier downtown Maru on Santa Fe. That walk stretched closer to an hour, with three other passable coffee shops on the way. And on the rare occasion I have to cross La Brea, I’ll swing by the Beverly Hills Maru Espresso Bar.
For almost a decade now, the Korean-inspired Maru has been the best coffee shop in America. A coffee shop’s ideal final form. That perfection is crystalized inside of the cozy, original location in Los Feliz, one of the country’s most desirable neighborhoods among How Long Gone listeners and Lady White Co. wearers. Each subsequent expansion has done an interesting job of maintaining the high level of care, consideration and quality, while, inevitably, tweaking the vibe in any number of directions.
After spending the past week down the street from the new Williamsburg location, visiting nearly every day, I’ve been ruminating on what makes this institution tick.
There’s Maru, the coffee roaster. My regular order at Maru is just a hot latte with regular milk. If I’m taking a first timer, I’ll order them a cream top or a spiced cold brew, two specialty drinks that helped make the place famous among a particular sect beginning in 2018. Matcha lovers swear by Maru’s dominance in that space as well.
Like with pizza, at a certain level of quality, all great coffee enters into this state of enjoyable equality that I find boring to differentiate. Is L’Industrie better than Ceres? Does Loquat actually do the superior pour over? That’s a debate for Reddit threads. Two purely coffee-based benefits that have kept Maru No. 1 for me: Accessibility and consistency. The coffee that Maru roasts is intentionally simple. On principle, they let others pursue complexity. This is much more Chez Pannise than Benu. A daily $7 coffee habit is a luxury, but the essential power of that caffeine regularity makes it a practical utility, too. At this level of regular excellence, the simplicity works.
A few days ago, an overly exuberant man in front of me at the Brooklyn Maru was eyeing the menu like a map of Disney World.
“Hi! Yes. Which of these signature drinks would say is the most signature?”
The cashier caught me rolling my eyes but didn’t miss a beat while recommending the cream top. The staff at all four locations leans charming, patient enough yet not indulgent in bullshit, and approachably hot. The cream top is the obvious choice, though I’ve always found that the standout here is the iced vanilla bean latte. It’s the only truly balanced version of this drink I’ve ever found. On the rare days where I let myself engage in afternoon treat culture, this is my pick.
I woke up deeply hungover on my final morning in Brooklyn. New York had once again gotten better of me, whisking my drunk ass from King to Cove to Wild Cherry to Lincoln Center and then down to Balthazar. The line at Maru was relatively short. I decided to see how the Williamsburg iced vanilla latte held up. It tasted a touch bitter.
There’s Maru, the place, which also means Maru, the line. For a brief moment, this was beautifully captured by an Instagram account deemed @maru_fits. Real heads with expensive, baggy, somewhat schlubby streetwear have always been part of the Maru aesthetic. They’re interspersed with women in matching yoga sets and dudes in Birkenstocks. It’s the least effortful spot to see and be seen.
But if Maru Los Feliz has the energy of the only location 90% of the patrons will visit that day, Maru Williamsburg is built on its own local terroir: half parents-who-Equinox and half mid-20s strivers who see that as aspirational. The pants here are consistently quite wide. On one late morning in the high-ceilinged space, I counted 22 total guests hanging inside the shop, two large strollers, six backpacks and two dogs. On another morning, there were three strollers and four dogs. (Though, to be fair, I’m double counting because one of the dogs was in one of the strollers). A young man gazed around for a seat before conceding that he’d have to stand. Then he placed a bite of kouign-amann in his girlfriend’s mouth. She nodded quietly. Their clothes had no wrinkles.
My favorite version of Maru ran from March 2020 through September 2022. During that pandemicky interlude, the Los Feliz Maru wouldn’t let you inside. The staff remained friendly and the line to order through the window was mostly manageable. It was just a good coffee shop. I often wouldn’t even take my headphones out of my ears.
The texts started flying when they finally relented — “Alert alert you can go inside Maru again” — and, yes, it objectively makes more sense this way. They’ve also remodeled the seating, making it more inviting to hang out for up to but no more than 25 minutes. It needed to evolve, and that’s fine.
Then there’s Maru, the expanding idea. A friend spotted me on my way out of Maru Williamsburg on Thursday and asked, “Do you feel like you’re in LA?” I said no, though I wasn’t expecting or wanting that.
When I got the tip that Maru was opening on this stretch of Wythe next to Sorbara’s, I responded, “Oh no. That’s gonna be nuts.” But of the possible quintessentially LA expansions of places I adore, Maru feels the most correct. There should only ever be one Courage Bagels. Expansion would mean dilution. Maru is singular in its status as the best coffee shop. That singularity has proven to be rooted more in ethos than area.
My instinctual fear was less about what this means for Maru, me or LA. It was more about the impending TikTok-and-cream-top-inspired scene. The scent of hustle culture permeating this space. That’s here. But that’s the neighborhood. It’s a credit to the Maru team that they can shape shift just enough to be themselves, fit in, deliver the goods and do numbers. If San Francisco or London come next, I’ll be happy to visit.
No establishment has been referenced in my texts more than Maru. The question is never “Want coffee?” It’s “Want Maru?” or “I’m stopping at Maru.” There’s coffee and there are coffee shops, and then there’s Maru. Nearly a decade and four locations into its run, that’s still the case. There are worse things to replicate.