Tactile Coffee

Historic Filipinotown Is L.A.'s Next Great Dining Neighborhood

"Tactile itself is a deeply personal business, too. The Yis, who both used to work in catering for Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, are Korean-Americans from Virginia. They serve blackstrap molasses syrup as a nod to their life in the South. Eric, who used to bake on Ludo Lefebvre's LudoBites food truck, makes excellent buttermilk biscuits at Tactile. He can only bake about two dozen at a time because he's using a portable Cadco convection oven. 'I'm familiar with this oven because we use it a lot in catering,' he says. 'It's an electric oven that doesn't need a gas line, which we do not have in this space. It was just something that fit into the space, and we're fortunate enough to find something that's powerful enough that we can use daily. We also bake our house-made focaccia there.' Tactile gets a little busy during my mid-afternoon visit. Eric is behind the counter alone while Mike sits and talks to me. Mike gets up immediately after we're done chatting. 'I'm going to go help,' he says." - Andy Wang