It’s 10:54 a.m. Thursday at Granada coffee shop in Angelino Heights, on one of those 73-degree winter mornings in Los Angeles when the sky glows its sunniest cobalt-blue through bare branches. An 11-person-deep line stretches just past the open door. I’m sitting on an L-shaped couch with sturdy burgundy upholstery, taking in the scene while waiting for a cortado.
The room beams casual charm — plants, light woods, abstract prints on the wall to add color, a communal table and a toddler-size rocking chair among a couple Eames-style loungers — and couldn’t hold many more people. Three women, all with babies in their arms, find seats at a second common table in the backyard garden, joining others who’ve disappeared into laptop-headphones concentration mode.
A guy with a complicated-looking video camera pans the crowd while maneuvering around the furniture. He’s in media, too, and we’re here for the same reason.
What makes this coffee destination unique
Sydney Wayser and her husband, Isaac Watters, opened Granada in early January. They run it out of the ground-floor section of their house. Their business has become the first breakout sensation in central Los Angeles that’s part of the Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MEHKO) program, introduced as a California Health and Safety Code statute in 2019, designed to legally permit enterprising cooks who want to make food to sell from home, or to create a micro-restaurant in their residence.
The state mandate left it to individual counties to approve MEHKO operations, which the L.A. County Board of Supervisors passed in May 2024. Applicants began receiving permits in November 2024, after a process that involved steps any local restaurant would go through, including food safety certification, business licensing and inspection via the L.A. County Department of Public Health.
Watters and Wayser brainstormed the idea for Granada after Watters heard a segment on KCRW, during which L.A. journalist Meghan McCarron was discussing an article about the MEHKO initiative she had written for the New York Times.
A view of the outdoor space at Granada.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
The couple had in essence already constructed a possibility for such a space, and as individuals they were built for it.
They’d designed their house, a tasteful modern cube at the top of a cul-de-sac among the 19th century Victorian and California Craftsman homes of Angelino Heights, for post-pandemic entertaining. They have a 3-year-old daughter. Something like a coffee shop, they thought, would be ideal to operate roughly during the hours she was in preschool Monday through Friday.
A short menu came together: classic espresso drinks, cold brew, loose leaf tea and the requisite matcha latte, alongside a few pastries (seasonally shifting galettes, both sweet and savory, square biscuits with visible layers and a delicately crumbed ricotta-blood orange cake) from star L.A. baker Sasha Piligian. Ceramicist Amy Louise Johnson crafted beautiful earthen cups.
Elderberry espresso tonic at Granada, center, and sweet and savory pastries from L.A. star baker Sasha Piligian.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
I’m guessing neither Watters nor Wayser anticipated quite the instant burst of social-media-driven popularity, but they’re also both musicians. I watched them both navigate customer interactions with unflagging charisma. When a woman complimented the vase of flowers on the kitchen island that serves as an ordering counter, Wayser waved her hand breezily and said, “They’re a week and a half old now and starting to wilt. I haven’t had the time to change them!”
Coming and going, I noticed patrons acting respectfully with regard to neighbors. No one unthinkingly parked in the long, steep driveway that serves multiple properties; the area has plenty of street parking. A fence around Granada dampens the sound. You won’t know the place exists until you pass through the entrance to find a yard full of souls attending what feels like an unusually mellow house party.
Bigger MEHKO implications and possibilities
It is thrilling to witness a small MEHKO business take off so suddenly. Granada, in its unusually beautiful setting, also feels especially positioned to succeed. I live in Echo Park. In the 7-minute drive from my apartment to Granada this week, I also passed the wonderful, venerable Valerie Echo Park, where every sidewalk table was filled with people eating, say, shiitake scrambled eggs and sipping Americanos. Then I reached the corner overrun by Canyon Coffee, with its day-long tableaux of youthful faces straight out of HBO’s “I Love L.A.,” where the series indeed filmed.
Granada, in its early weeks, looks to have drawn the same intersection of leisure and creative classes. The cortado was smooth. Piligian’s pastries were predictably fantastic. It will be fun to see how it all evolves.
The only other MEHKO project I’ve experienced is Da Barbara, an idiosyncratic, five-table Italian restaurant housed behind opaque windows in the Ovelo Hollywood apartment complex. Chef Barbara Pollastrini has a style that crisscrosses midcentury Continental and 1990s sensibilities. Her menu mingles brandy-scented shrimp or filet mignon rolled with prosciutto, Parmigiano-Reggiano, caramelized onions, sage and rosemary with tagliolini sauced with pomodoro or lemon cream. Dishes during my one dinner were either over- or under-seasoned. I’ve heard the privacy of the tiny space has attracted celebrities.
L.A. County government maintains a running list of businesses with MEHKO permits. For every Granada and Da Barbara that have established a consistent schedule, dozens more operate infrequently. I scrolled through the directory of over 250 names, stopping at ones that hint of specific, compelling cuisines: Haitian, Mauritian, Keralan. Many led to seldom-updated Instagram accounts, or apps with messages that said, “Not currently taking orders.” Success stories have also emerged. Next on my docket to try: Mid East Eats, a Palestinian restaurant that was the first MEHKO-permitted restaurant in Watts, and La Sinaloense in Pomona, specializing in cabeza de res.
Fatteh at Nawal in 2023
(Oscar Mendoza / For The Times)
I was happy to see Nawal, a Syrian Circassian venture by brothers Armbay and Dotee Zakaria, about whom I wrote when they were holding weekend backyard pop-ups near Dodger Stadium in 2023. Lately, Instagram reminds me, they’ve mostly limited their efforts to selling falafel wraps at occasional events.
I miss bowls of Nawal’s fatteh for breakfast. Thinking about their pop-ups two years ago, too, brings up the gray area of the informal food economy, a tributary that inarguably feeds the greatness of L.A.’s culinary culture. An aim of MEHKO is clearly to formalize — legalize — the existence of unlicensed micro-restaurants. L.A. County has offered to subsidize the first 1,000 MEHKO permitees, waiving the initial $597 application review fee, through June 30, 2026, and completing an eight-week online training course includes limited-time funding assistance of $3,000.
At any level, the realities of the restaurant business are brutal. It’s easy to imagine many shades of red tape, or even basic financial constraints, that could discourage a would-be MEHKO entrepreneur from not only completing the permitting process, but then finding and maintaining a consistent customer base to support a business. Permitting also comes with a stipulation stated plainly on the L.A County website: “MEHKOs may serve 90 meals per week and 30 meals per day with up to $100,000 gross sales annually.”
A defining arch for Los Angeles restaurants this decade is the excellence forged, however cruelly, from chefs who created pandemic-era pop-ups to survive. Out of the crisis rose Moo’s Craft Barbecue, Azizam, Quarter Sheets, Perilla L.A., Kuya Lord and Bridgetown Roti, to name six standouts. Could MEHKO prove to be a similar conduit for nascent talent to reach clamoring audiences, and achieve major career leaps, hopefully under way less harrowing circumstances?
Far too soon to know. For now, we start with morning coffee sipped out of a ceramic cup in a gorgeous backyard.
Granada coffee shop: 1451 Carroll Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 379-2573, instagram.com/granada_echopark
You’re reading Tasting Notes
Our L.A. Times restaurant experts share insights and off-the-cuff takes on where they’re eating right now.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy.
Also … 