Federal Coffee

Federal Coffee is a walk-up window with a terrace and no room to sit inside, and the way it works is half the charm: you order on the Pico side and collect on the Federal Avenue side, which is where the shop got its name. Doors open at 7am on weekdays and 7:30am at weekends, which makes it an easy first stop of a West LA morning. The matcha comes with a choice of milk and the vanilla one is what gets named first, sitting on a board otherwise led by the Pink Latte and Pink Cappuccino this corner is known for. Pastries are Chaumont Bakery and the food is Farm Shop, so a croissant on the terrace is the intended move. What we like is how well it slots into a matcha walk: Motoring Coffee is about a quarter mile north on Olympic, and Dorala and Alfred Coffee share a building a little further along the same street, which turns one window into three stops without much effort.