Thank You Coffee began serving its play on pumpkin spice in 2020, but the Chinatown and Anaheim coffee counters riff on Asian ingredients and flavor profiles with options such as the five-spice latte year-round. Around fall, however, the scent of gourd spice always makes its return: the seasonal, signature KSL — or kabocha spice latte — which swaps pumpkin for kabocha squash.
“We don’t really eat pumpkin, but we eat a lot of kabocha,” said co-owner Jonathan Yang. “My wife, Julia, and I love kabocha but not all people know it, and we realized this is a neat way to highlight that kabocha is pretty much like a Japanese pumpkin.”
Thank You Coffee’s KSL derives its chief flavors from a blend of toasted spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom and ginger, which are turned into a syrup with a combination of white and dark brown sugars and ginger bitters; it all gets steeped and strained. Yang steams fresh kabocha squash, then purées it and incorporates it into the spice syrup, adding depth without detracting from the spices, he says. In both locations, a hint of condensed milk is added to the lattes, and they’re dusted with kinako, a roasted soybean flour, for added earthiness and a pie-crust effect. This year they’re adding another fall-inspired drink to the menu at both locations: a persimmon-and-apple latte that’s meant to evoke coziness and comfort throughout the season.