Best Coffee Shops to Work or Study From in Koreatown

What makes About Time work isn't any one room, it's that there are several. Two floors, a courtyard with fire pits, and a doorway to somewhere else whenever the seat you picked turns out to be wrong. There's real space here, the seats are generous, and upstairs runs quieter than down. Arrive before lunch and the free lot behind the building is yours, which is why people drive in from other neighborhoods for this one. The wifi's free throughout, and if your whole afternoon rides on the connection, a hotspot in the bag doesn't hurt. Either way, nothing else here gives you as many ways to stay.

There's a call button on every table, and that's how you order. It catches people out, who queue at the counter before realizing everyone around them was ordering from their seat. Worth knowing, because it means you never have to pack up and surrender a table you waited for. Not that you'd wait long. The room is enormous, wooden floors and lamps, a bit like a library that serves dinner, with outlets at most of the seats you'd want. Take a small table, keep headphones handy for the student groups at the big ones, and it'll hold you until midnight.

Come in the morning and this is one of the best rooms in Koreatown. Early, the upstairs floor at M Plaza is calm, parking's free in the lot, and the window counter along Olympic is yours for the taking, which is the seat everyone arriving at noon is too late for. It's a different place after lunch, busier and louder, and the tables with a socket beside them tend to go first, which is one more reason mornings suit it. Get your hardest three hours done before the room turns, eat from a kitchen that sends out actual plates, and leave the afternoon to everybody else.

Two in the morning, seven nights a week. That's the whole pitch and it's enough, because when everything else has closed and the thing still isn't finished, this is where people end up. The wifi's fast and the music sits at a volume you can work or talk over, which is rarer than it ought to be. Seats and parking both get tight at peak, since it shares a Wilshire plaza with restaurants, and both ease off the later you arrive. Which is the point of the place. It's at its best at the hour every other option has given up.

Pick this one when the job is one task and no company. It's a bright pink room on Western with a few tables out front, quieter than most of what surrounds it, and there are more seats than the size of the place suggests, with outlets easy to come by. The plaza lot is free if you beat the rest of the row to it, so come mid morning. Doors close at seven on weeknights, which makes it an afternoon room rather than a late one, and a good one for work that needs a finish line.

Sit on the back patio. It's the calmest corner of the building and it's where nearly all the outlets are, so heading indoors is the wrong instinct here. It faces Western, so there's street noise, and headphones turn that into a non issue. Everything else about this one is settled: the wifi has come back fast on every Grounded check in here, and everyone who's answered the question has said they'd work here again. Doors at 7am and shut by six, so give it your best early hours and it'll return them.

Time of day is the whole story here. Through the afternoon it's quiet and chill, a big second floor room on Vermont with space to spread out and plenty of power, and the pool tables and karaoke rooms just sit there in the corner of your eye. Come evening it turns into the other thing it is, louder and busier, and plenty of people work better in exactly that. Either way the kitchen will build you a bowl of ramen, so a long stretch never has to break. Beat the lot and the room is yours until midnight.

A roastery that teaches. Barista courses run in Korean and English in the same room you're sitting in, which tells you exactly where the attention goes here. Mornings are unhurried, seats aren't fought over before noon, and the private lot is free, so nothing about arriving here is a fight. Food stops at pastries and the doors close at five, which makes this the front half of a day rather than all of it, and the best place on this page to start one.

The first of the three Alchemists and the one that stays open latest, which is why the study crowd settled on this one. It's gray and industrial and considerably bigger inside than the door suggests, with the particular quiet a room gets when most of the people in it are reading. Worth a glance round for a socket before you settle in, since in a room this size those tables tend to go first. Parking means valet or a meter when it's busy, so there's a few dollars in the day either way. On a weekday morning it's as close to a library as Koreatown gets.

Nobody here is going to hurry you, which is the entire point of the place. Low light, jazz that never climbs loud enough to interrupt anything, wifi that holds, and the easiest parking on this page. There's room across two floors and a patio, and it's popular enough that the best tables tend to go early, so off peak is the easier bet. The bathroom sits off the walkway, so that corner can get busy. Time it right and you've got the calmest seat in Koreatown for as long as you want it.