LAReview
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Triniti
This spot is Permanently Closed.
Included In
Triniti in Echo Park looks like a lot of Eastside coffee shops. There are artfully arranged plants, black walls, not entirely comfortable places to sit, and impractically low tables. There’s a coffee machine that looks like a spaceship, nitro cold brew, almond milk draft lattes, and more than one type of matcha. You’ll find a guy with a beard reading Kafka while drinking his single origin cortado in one corner, and a couple with prominent stick-and-poke tattoos having iced coffees in another.
But Triniti isn’t just another Eastside coffee shop. Triniti is a coffee shop with truly excellent food. Modern, exciting, and often comforting food that you’d happily eat in a restaurant with white tablecloths for double the price.
The small menu changes every week, and is full of much more creative lunch dishes than the not-great grain salad you tried to make last weekend. There are usually a couple of excellent salads (like the little gem with an XO dressing that should be bottled and preserved for future generations), heartier things like chickpea stew, and a very unexpected but impressive piece of fish. If you come for breakfast, you’ll find simple dishes like soft scrambled eggs with creme fraiche and oatmeal with cocoa nibs.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Whatever you end up eating here will be unusual, tasty, and probably not at all what you were expecting from a coffee shop. It will, however, be the food equivalent of a big hug, whether you order one of the stews, or a “salad” that’s mostly just warm potatoes. But that’s what make Triniti so interesting - you walk in expecting mediocre pastries, and you leave having had a piece of perfectly-cooked ocean trout with charred cabbage.
Even with the slightly too-cool coffee shop feel, Triniti still manages to feel like a place you want to hang out in. So go ahead and treat it like your local coffee shop. The barista will remember your order, and you can hang out in a corner reading about a guy who turns into a cockroach. And you can eat some incredible food while you’re at it.
Food Rundown
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Little Gem Lettuces, Spicy XO Dressing, Crispy Shallot
Pole Bean Salad, Tarragon, Fresh Burrata, Crispy Bread
Catalan Chickpeas, Brown Butter, Tomato Clam Broth, Egg Yolk
photo credit: Jakob Layman