Dayglow ★9.3

Almost every serious coffee bar in Los Angeles answers the question “whose coffee is this?” with one name. Dayglow answers it with a shelf. The Silver Lake room was built around the idea that a café should behave like a record shop — a curated wall of other people’s work, restocked constantly, with somebody behind the counter who has listened to all of it and has opinions. At any given moment the bags on display come from roasteries scattered across two continents, and the drink you order depends less on a house style than on what arrived this week.

Highlights

• A multi-roaster bar, not a roastery — the business is curation rather than roasting: between ten and twenty roasteries are represented at any given time, split roughly half domestic and half international.
• Names most Americans can’t buy locally — the shelf regularly carries European roasteries such as Koppi from Sweden, The Barn from Berlin, The Coffee Collective from Copenhagen and Drop Coffee from Stockholm, alongside American names like Madcap, Little Wolf and Hex.
• The list is decided by blind cupping — the team tastes through candidate coffees every week without the branding in front of them, so what reaches the bar is chosen on the cup rather than on the reputation of the label.
• Signature drinks named after Wes Anderson films — the house series is deliberately playful, mixing distilled coffee with things like citrus and coconut cream rather than defaulting to syrup.
• The bar is color-coded — the fit-out is bright, graphic and unapologetically loud, which is a rare position in a specialty scene that mostly does pale wood and quiet.
• This is where the company started — Silver Lake was the first room, and the business has since spread across Los Angeles and to other cities, but this is the original.

What’s in the cup

The multi-roaster model is the entire proposition, so it is worth understanding what it means in practice. Dayglow buys finished coffee from roasteries it rates and sells it both by the bag and by the cup. That means the filter menu is not one coffee with a seasonal change; it is a list, with tasting notes, of several coffees that differ from one another as much as wines from different regions do. It also means the espresso can change, and that the person behind the counter has to know how each of them behaves.

The curation leans adventurous. Alongside classically executed washed and natural coffees, the shelf makes room for the experimental end of the industry — co-fermented lots, aggressive anaerobics, the kind of processing that produces flavors people either love immediately or find alarming. If you have only ever drunk coffee that tastes like coffee, this is a place to be told that plainly and steered toward something gentler; if you actively hunt for the strange, this is one of the few counters in the city that reliably has it.

The house signature series goes in a different direction and is where the room’s sense of humor lives. The drinks are named after Wes Anderson films and built from distilled coffee, citrus and cream rather than from flavored syrups — engineered cocktails without alcohol rather than sweetened lattes. It is a deliberate counterweight: the filter bar is where the seriousness sits, and the signature list is where the fun does. Milk drinks are made properly, and non-dairy is a normal order rather than an exception.

Who’s behind it

Dayglow was founded by two cousins, Tohm and Philippe Ifergan, and launched at the turn of 2017 into 2018 with this Silver Lake room. Tohm, who runs the company, arrived at coffee sideways: he spent years touring as a drummer and worked as a barista in the gaps between tours, and as the travel increased the coffee gradually took over. Before Dayglow he worked at Portola Coffee Roasters down in Orange County, which is where the technical grounding comes from.

The musician’s route matters more than it sounds, because it explains the curatorial instinct. Somebody who spent years in record shops and on tour buses is going to build a coffee bar that works like a label’s back catalog rather than like a factory outlet. The stated philosophy is that the company does not push coffee but curates it, and that good roasteries deserve an audience regardless of how well known their branding is. That is an unusual position for a business to take, because it means giving shelf space to competitors’ names rather than building your own.

What it’s for

Come here first for the tasting visit — the scenario Dayglow is built for and the one it does better than almost anywhere in the city. Ordering a filter coffee here is an active decision, not a default, and the reward is a cup you cannot get in a café that roasts its own. Sit with it, read the notes, and treat the visit the way you would treat a wine bar with a strong list. Bringing a friend who thinks all coffee tastes the same is the highest-value use of this room.

For working, it is workable but not luxurious. The Silver Lake space is compact, with a limited number of seats indoors and some seating outside, and it fills. It is fine for an hour with a laptop in a quiet stretch of the day, and it is a poor bet for a guaranteed table at peak. Treat it as a place to answer email over a good coffee rather than as an office substitute; there are larger rooms elsewhere in the neighborhood if hours of desk time are the goal.

The takeaway case is strong, and so is the shopping one. A large share of the traffic here is people buying beans rather than drinks, and the counter will help you choose — this is the rare café where asking “what should I take home?” gets a genuinely useful conversation rather than a shrug toward the only bag they sell. And for a solo visit, the retail wall does the work: there is always something new to look at, which makes sitting alone feel deliberate.

The space

The room is small, bright and graphic. Color is used structurally rather than decoratively — the bar, the shelving and the signage are part of one visual system, and it is loud in a way that most specialty cafés studiously avoid. The effect is closer to a small independent shop than to a minimalist coffee temple, which is exactly the intention: retail is not hidden at the back here, it is the room.

Seating is genuinely limited. There is a modest set of seats inside and some outdoor seating on the frontage, and on a weekend the count is the constraint. That is the trade-off the format makes: floor space that another café would fill with tables is occupied by the shelf, because the shelf is the product. Noise is moderate and social, with music that matters to the people playing it.

The Silver Lake context is important. This is one of the few genuinely walkable commercial strips in Los Angeles, dense with shops and restaurants, and a Dayglow visit is naturally part of a longer walk rather than a destination in itself. The reservoir and the neighborhood’s residential hills are close, and the surrounding blocks give you somewhere to take the cup.

Beyond coffee

Food is minimal and honest about it: pastries to accompany a drink, no kitchen, no brunch. Silver Lake is saturated with places to eat properly within a few minutes’ walk, and Dayglow has evidently decided not to compete with them. If you want breakfast, get it nearby and come here afterward.

The retail side is the real second act. Bags from the rotating cast of roasteries are the point of the shelf, and the online subscription extends the same idea beyond the room — the café exists partly so that people can taste before they commit to shipping. Brewing equipment sits alongside. This is the part of the business a first-time visitor most often underestimates: the counter is a shopfront for a curation service, and the cup in your hand is the sample.

When to come

The doors open early enough for the commuting crowd and the café stays open into the evening, which is unusual for a specialty room in this city and makes an after-work coffee genuinely possible. Weekday mornings are the sharpest peak; weekend late mornings are the longest one, when Silver Lake’s walking traffic arrives all at once.

If your visit is about the filter list, come in a quiet weekday stretch. That is when there is time for the counter to talk you through what is open, which is the difference between drinking a good coffee and understanding it. If you are buying beans rather than drinking, any time works — but the selection turns over, so what was on the shelf last month is a poor guide to what is on it now.

Getting there

Dayglow sits in Silver Lake, on the neighborhood’s main commercial boulevard in the stretch near the Junction, a short distance downhill from the reservoir and within walking range of Echo Park. This is one of the walkable pockets of Los Angeles: once you have arrived, the rest of an afternoon can be done on foot, and that is how most visitors use it.

Arriving is the hard part, and it is worth being blunt about it. There is no rail station in Silver Lake — the nearest subway stop is well to the east — so this is effectively a car-and-bus neighborhood, and the boulevard here is one of the more congested corridors on the east side. Street parking along the strip is metered, tightly restricted and heavily contested, and the residential blocks behind it carry permit rules that are enforced. Budget more time for parking than for driving, use the frequent bus routes along the boulevard if you can, or do what a large share of the neighborhood does and arrive on foot from somewhere nearby.

Good to know

The honest weaknesses are size and predictability. There are not many seats, so a busy hour means standing or waiting. And because the roster rotates, you cannot come back for the exact coffee you loved — if you find something you want again, buy the bag while it is there. For people who want a fixed house espresso they can rely on every morning, a single-roaster café will be the better daily habit.

Two things that make the visit better. Ask questions: the whole model assumes a conversation at the counter, and the staff are equipped for it. And if the experimental processing side is not for you, say so — being steered toward a clean washed coffee is a completely normal request here, and much better than gambling on a name you do not know.

Questions and answers

Does Dayglow roast its own coffee?

No, and that is the point. It is a curated multi-roaster: it buys from roasteries around the world and sells their coffee by the cup and by the bag.

How many roasteries does it carry?

The shelf holds coffees from a rotating group of roasteries at any given time, roughly half American and half international, and the selection turns over continuously.

Who founded it?

Cousins Tohm and Philippe Ifergan. Tohm, who runs the company, was a touring drummer who worked as a barista between tours and came to Dayglow from Portola Coffee Roasters in Orange County.

When did it open?

This Silver Lake room was the first, launched at the turn of 2017 into 2018. The company has since opened rooms elsewhere in Los Angeles and in other cities.

Can I work here with a laptop?

For an hour in a quiet stretch, yes. The room is small and the seats are few, so it is not a reliable place for a long working session at peak.

What are the signature drinks?

A house series named after Wes Anderson films, built from distilled coffee with things like citrus and coconut cream rather than from flavored syrups.

Is there food?

Pastries only. There is no kitchen; Silver Lake has plenty of proper food within a short walk.

Can I buy beans and keep getting them?

Yes. Bags from the roasteries on the shelf are sold across the counter, and the company runs an online subscription built on the same curation.

Is parking difficult?

Yes. The boulevard here is congested and street parking is metered and contested, with permit restrictions on the residential blocks behind. Allow extra time, or arrive by bus or on foot.

Opening hours