Restaurant review: LA Mill Coffee Boutique in Silver Lake

The server asks the two of us about coffee. We look at each other knowing there's no question -- we're going with the siphon, a Japanese contraption for brewing coffee that looks straight out of a chemistry lab. I love the magic-show of it, the moment when the server turns on the butane burner and the water begins to bubble in the spherical glass globe at the bottom, and then slowly rises up the stem and floods the chamber above where the coffee, coarsely ground, awaits. She stirs the muddy mix with a spatula -- slowly, carefully.

By S. Irene Virbila

April 23, 2008