La Mill Coffee
(323) 663-4462
1636 Silver Lake Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Hours are still moving around:
9am-5pm Tue-Sun; eventually opens 6am-9pm

• Restaurant, but more a serious designer coffee house
• Food options are limited and priced towards BMW 750 owners
• Very very friendly staff but service is slow and inconsistent
• Cleanest bathrooms in a Silverlake establishment, EVER!

LA Mill Coffee is one impressive “looking” hybrid restaurant and coffee house. Originally known for it’s high-end black-bean delights, this year the venue partnered up with a proper chef and expanded into the breakfast and lunch arena. But… if LA Mill were a radio show I’d have to call it “Morning Becomes Too Eclectic” for anybody to actually eat.

We here at Love B. Scott try to review restaurants and events that we think are fantastic recommendations, but this spot was so over the top odd and annoying we had to “ring the alarm” of concern. This is the kind of restaurant non-Californians mock us for. Tiny, fussy plates of food involving intimidating ingredients. And the ironic part is their mission statement is to provide simple, straight-forward fare.

We started with coffee. Wait, not “coffee”, but an orange infused cappuccino with textured (read: steamed) milk garnished with cacao. This was actually a fantastic cup of coffee, but the fact remains-it was still coffee, and I’m not entirely sure a cup should ever cost $6.

Next up: “breakfast”. Now, if you’re a vegetarian, there is one dish available. If you’re not, the choices aren’t much better. To start we ordered a bowl of granola. Hands down the worst granola I’ve ever had in my life. A little over $8 gets you 13 round “acorns” (in size and texture)… in a bowl… with some skim milk… and that’s it! I could have gone to my front lawn and made the same dish for about 42 cents. Might have tasted better too! And although the swirl and flourish with which the server poured the milk was quite impressive, it didn’t make up for the $7.58 mark-up.

Next up we were craving a good egg-type dish. One has two options of how to order eggs at La Mill: soft-scrambled, or baked in a cocotte. Intimidated to order something we couldn’t pronounce, and afraid to insult the sensibilities of the kitchen staff by asking for our eggs fully-cooked, we went with the soft-scramble. Forget that standard “fluffy yellow and white” egg concept we’ve all come to love, LA Mill likes it wet and runny like the Brits love! Garnished with a few tiny slivers of applewood bacon and wild mushrooms, it was actually quite tasty. But like everything else, little. And as for toast? You get your choice of brioche, and some more brioche. It was a bit dry, and didn’t make up for the fact that the tiny serving of eggs left us still hungry.

At this point we probably should have opted for dessert, as they did look amazing. But we were giggling too hard over the bowl of nuts-in-milk and fancy eggs to stay any longer. So we headed out to find some real food.

As for the scene, the crowd is made up of your usual hip-but-detached Silverlake residents. Which indicates LA Mill might want to think about the lack of vegetarian options. We were fortunate to sit next to some sort of religious yoga gurus. Complete in head wraps and flowing dress like outfits, they also asked about veggie options and ordered the granola. We fought the urge to tell them to get out while there was still time.

Bottom-line? Seems the Yogis and Starbucks kids can all get along here, eating stale bread, nuts and milk, and overpriced coffee. But if you’re hung over and craving a filling and yummy breakfast at a fantastic value… then go to the Coffee Table up the street. If you require early morning eye candy and designer coffee then this is the next hot-spot for you. (Just plan on hitting up the Coffee Table after, as you’ll likely still be hungry).