Yala

Yala is a specialty coffee shop built on Middle Eastern flavors, and the name does the explaining. It joins the Arabic yallah to LA, and the founder describes it as an ode to Middle Eastern immigrant parents, hers Iraqi and Iraqi-Armenian out of Baghdad. The rest of that thought is about growing up second generation in Los Angeles and seeing the beauty in Middle Eastern flavors through a new generational lens. That is what the drinks are doing. The Yala Matcha is the house build, and the fig and vanilla matcha latte is the one that makes the case for what they are doing, fig being the flavor the region grows on. There is a matcha peach water americano too, which sounds unlikely and works. Two rooms carry it, on Sunset in Silver Lake and on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. We would start with the fig and vanilla and let it change your mind about what a matcha latte is allowed to taste like.