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Ambrosia Coffee Roasters

748 N Fries Ave, Wilmington, CA 90744, USA

SPECIALTY

Ambrosia Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee shop located in Los Angeles. Check in here with the Pulled Coffee app to earn real cash rewards. Specialty shops count toward all challenges including Pulled 50, Pulled 100, and Pulled 300.

Ambrosia Coffee Roasters anchors North Fries Avenue in Wilmington, a port-adjacent stretch of South Bay Los Angeles where specialty coffee was almost nonexistent before the shop opened. Founder John Phan grew up in LA and got his first coffee job at Starbucks at fourteen. Today he pulls every shot on a manual espresso machine, hand-crafting each cup the way he learned the craft over twenty years. Beans rotate across Ethiopia, Colombia, and Honduras single origins. The Vietnamese Coconut Latte is the signature, a Cafe Sua Da reworked with creamy coconut. The room stays open through six on weekdays. On weekend mornings the space pulls Wilmington regulars and South Bay locals who drove from Long Beach because Ambrosia is closer than Pasadena. Order the Vietnamese Coconut Latte if you came for the drink Phan built the menu around. Order an Ethiopian pour-over if you want to taste what the manual machine pulls without milk.

About Los Angeles

Los Angeles specialty coffee built outward from a roasting culture rather than from cafes. Groundwork Coffee Co. has been roasting certified organic coffee in Los Angeles since 1990, one of the longest running organic programs in the city, with the Arts District cafe on Traction Avenue a few blocks from the Sixth Street bridge. Intelligentsia opened the Venice cafe on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in 2010 in a converted bungalow with a generous patio, the kind of room that became the template for a decade of Westside specialty design.

The neighborhood map runs the length of the basin. The Arts District holds Groundwork on Traction and Alfred Coffee at 714 Traction. Venice and Abbot Kinney carry Intelligentsia and the Westside specialty bench. Downtown anchors Cognoscenti Coffee Roastery at 1118 San Julian in the Fashion District and Birdies on Olympic and Hill, two blocks from the Convention Center, where the kitchen runs free-range fried chicken and donuts hourly. Carthay covers Lo/Cal Coffee and Market on South Fairfax Avenue, with the first Lo/Cal opening in 2014. The Cumulus complex at La Cienega and Jefferson holds Alchemist Coffee Project a few minutes south of Culver City.

The wider region extends into the South Bay and Glendale. Ambrosia Coffee Roasters anchors North Fries Avenue in Wilmington, where founder John Phan pulls every shot on a manual espresso machine. Long Beach holds Common Room Roasters at 2952 East 14th, a purpose-built space with a barista training academy and a front patio. Glendale carries Urartu on North Artsakh Avenue, where owner Urik and his son Youra opened the Armenian-themed family operation in 2004 and built it into a second home for the neighborhood's Armenian community.