Black Canvas Coffee

California dreamin

I’m not sure what you do when you find yourself in a new city with a bit of time to kill. In my personal and business travels, I’ve been lucky enough to see large cities like Hong Kong and London, as well as wonderful cities a little closer to home like Portland. Today I’m privileged to be in Los Angeles for business and, as always, on the hunt for good coffee. 

Having to meet my boss/ride for the morning at 7:30 am puts a limit on my search criteria and re-prioritizes them as follows: 1) close 2) good. Thankfully I found a place which meets both. 

Walking through the grey dawn of storied streets like Sunset Boulevard with few people and whatever wildlife has made their way into symbiosis with city dwellers is extremely meditative. The houses in this area sit behind walled and manicured gardens with privacy hedges and security cameras to keep people away, which I find charming as a guy just walking around looking for a good cup of joe. No, dear resident of this house, your security cameras don’t scare me, no amount of cameras will keep me from walking on this sidewalk. 

This morning was absolutely lovely, very chill with extremely little sunlight poking through the dense grey fog. Yes, I am that person, you knew this when you decided to read a coffee blog. I may be a Ravenclaw but I have a strong affinity towards the hygge life of a Hufflepuff. So, despite the early show time for my ride, I was quite happy with everything that was happening. 

Enough rambling, let’s talk about Black Canvas. It’s a lovely little spot replete with a garden wall and natural wood grain accents throughout. It’s very hip as befits an LA coffee shop. The baristas were quite nice and immensely helpful. Being jetlagged and needing as much of a jolt of caffeine as I could get in as short an amount of time as possible, I ordered an espresso shot to go with my regular cup of black drip coffee, also a pain au chocolat because this would be breakfast as well. The espresso came first in a delightful teal cup that made for some good shots for the ‘gram. The espresso was beautiful with brash dark fruit flavors up front which blended to blueberries in the middle leaving a clean finish at the end. It was thick and heavy on the tongue in the best of ways and a perfect compliment to the grey morning and my weary eyes. The black coffee was freshly prepared for me and expressed the same notes as the espresso with more subdued tones. Probably most surprising was the fact that the coffee’s flavors weren’t thrown off by the sweetness in the pastry, which was delicious and flaky with semi-sweet chocolate in the middle. The walk back to my pickup point was delightful with the warm coffee in hand and the pasty in my stomach. I wished I had more time to actually eat it all while sitting in the comfortable cafe, but we can’t get everything we want in life all the time. 

The rest of the day was filled with warehousing and supply chain stuff while trying to keep my eyes open from 1:30 until about 5 pm when my second wind kicked in. Supply chain is thoroughly enjoyable, but if you’re lacking pep at all it will bore you to sleep, and looking through the dense legal jargon that is a parcel carrier contract will put you into a stupor no matter how much caffeine or sleep is running through your system. I hope you can tell how much I love my chosen career path, it really is fun, I swear. 

All in all, a wonderful spot that I’ll keep tucked away in my memory for future early morning jaunts. Thankfully I’ll be working closer to the hotel tomorrow and I’ll be able to try out a different cafe since I’ll have a little more time, although I’m already tempted to just go back to Black Canvas again. 

Well everyone, publishing is going to be a little strange this week since I’m travelling, but on the up side I do have more time to write some pieces that require a bit more focus and effort that I haven’t been able to put in while I’m at home. I hope you enjoy them when they get published later on. Until next time, I hope you’ll go find me on Instagram at @matt.likes.coffee where I’ll post random pictures of coffee (or booze) that I’m drinking. With that said, please have a great day, and thanks so much for reading!