Coffee Colab opens downtown, with Suits & Knives coffee and Sugarbloom pastries

Tucked into a courtyard off a gritty stretch of 8th Street (i.e. the Fashion District), the latest downtown cafe, Coffee Colab, has opened.

William Miyazaki of Suits & Knives Coffee Roasters and Leon Li of Humble Cup, along with Sonny Mediana of Taza Coffee, have opened the 700-square-foot shop in the shadow of Santee Village’s Cornell Lofts building, where locals already are spilling onto the sidewalk, a makeshift patio with a few tables, benches and chairs. Miyazaki and Li were former baristas at downtown’s Spring for Coffee, where they met.

Miyazaki revamped a vegan market and turned it into a homey shop filled with personal odds and ends that include old books, a cassette tape player and vintage typewriter. Miyazaki also built many of the fixtures, including the pour-over bar, and his wife, Natashia Sarah Fredrerika Lunt Miyazaki, provided the logos for his coffee roasting company and the cafe, as well as a menu painted on the wall in the shape of a Chemex coffee maker.

At the heart of the cafe is a vintage 1970s red La Marzocco GS2 espresso machine. On the coffee menu: cold brew ($3.50), black coffee ($2.75), latte ($4), Americano ($3), cappuccino ($3.75), mocha ($4.50) and cortado ($3.50). The beans are from Suits & Knives and other L.A.-based roasters. Cookies and pastries are from Action Cookies and Sugarbloom Bakery.

305 E. 8th St., Los Angeles, www.coffeecolab.com.