Smoky Hollow Roasters — Restaurant in El Segundo

Exceptional coffee, this is probably my favorite coffee shop in California. I visit several times a week and there's always at least 2 varieties of fresh coffee available. I'm a fan of light roasted, flavorful coffee, and they deliver. Admittedly, I have a favorite, their Ethiopia sourced blends tend to hit the perfect flavor profile for me. I think right now its Ethiopia Guji, and one busy day my friends and I were making a quick drive by and I just blindly ordered a large light roast, as usual, and as I took that first sip, it shook me. The flavor was intense, I just got hit with this juicy bright acidity mixed with flowery notes and a nutty lasting finish. I was focused on Go-go-go! that day, but this forced me to stop and take a minute to enjoy the little things like a good cup of coffee. That kind of sums up the experience here. You have to stop by and try a cup! I most enjoy coffee, but their Espresso is quite delectable. It's very much what it is meant to be, in the sense that you can enjoy it straight. There are subtleties to their Espresso that give it a complex flavor on the pallet. Many times, espresso just tastes like burnt coffee, and that's far from the case here, as they make a tasty one. However, where things go off the charts for me is their in-house roasted coffee. While I'm a light roast fan, their Smoke Stack "dark" roast, is dark that has real flavor, and it's a treat. So much so, that I will buy it for home use. When I buy beans for home use, I'm prepared to have many, many cups of that same flavor over the course of the week. Smoke Stack is the only dark that...

Visiting Smoky Hollow has been self-debate on my head given the polarized reviews I read about the place. Hard to find parking, unpleasant service, so-so taste, name it. But in contrary, some people highly recommended it and spoke great stuffs about it.

Proving it myself, the dedicated parking spots were indeed limited, but plenty of street parking available and only required very short walk. The space was pretty huge and uniquely designed in vintage vibes with a clear emphasis on it being a coffee roaster. Plenty of desks were provided, making it very accommodative as a working space. The place was quite busy throughout the day, but I witnessed myself that the baristas were pretty swift in getting all the orders ready, shooing away all the negative critics.

They offered light bites for the drink companion, for which my pick was Matcha Pistachio croissant. Despite being quite disappointed that it didn't have any filling while I was expecting pistachio paste, it surprisingly tasted pretty decent with flaky and buttery pastry base. The matcha icing on top added extra pleasure to enjoy surely.

I went for their fall special, Maple Latte, which came with Pure Maple syrup. If you're in the boat who preferred your cup of joe to come in gigantic size, you would love that they had 20oz size available. It was surely great coffee with strong aroma and flavor, but I would prefer the maple syrup to be toned down a bit as it's tad too sweet. I could see myself coming back given the convenience and good quality coffee; probably next trying something more basic instead of...

I've been there several times over the past year, or more. I typically get a drip coffee. This a.m. I got exactly that, dark roast. I noticed a few coffee grounds floating in my coffee, and thought nothing of it. When I finished my coffee, there was more than a half a teaspoon full of coffee grounds in the bottom of the cup. I went up to the counter and showed the girl with the glasses, the grounds in the cup. She smiled and said, "That happens with the first cups in the morning." Nope, it does not. If you properly place the filter and the grounds in the filter, you do not get grounds in your coffee. If they cannot make drip coffee, I wonder what their other coffees are like. I will not find out. This is the last time I'll be there. She didn't offer another cup nor a refund. This is poor customer service, in the least. There are plenty of other coffee houses in the area. To add insult to injury, I left a heafty tip, when I paid....