Steep LA

Steep occupies a unit in Mandarin Plaza in Chinatown, and The Infatuation's review describes the daytime version accurately: sleek, all-white interiors and monochrome furniture, a daytime tea shop and lunch counter with a prolific selection of teas that the staff are happy to help you make sense of. That last part is the actual service being sold. The list covers five of the six major Chinese tea categories - black, green, oolong, white and pu-er - all handpicked by the founders from growers in China and Taiwan, and each tea on the steeped menu is published with a fragrance profile and a separate taste profile, which is a level of documentation almost no cafe in Los Angeles offers.

What that looks like in practice: Yingde, a black tea, listed with fragrance notes of chocolate, walnut, caramel and fruit and taste notes of cherry, licorice and red bean, at $15 for the smaller pot and $35 for the larger. Lapsang Souchong at $18, with orchid, malt, chestnut and wood on the nose and a smooth, thick, lightly sweet finish. Longjing green at $18, reading grain, mung bean, pine nut and biscuit. Gailan Houkui at $24, the most expensive on the list, thick and grassy with coconut. Snow Mountain oolong at $18, which the menu describes as cotton candy and mung bean turning to jasmine and caramel. Oriental Beauty at $21 and Wild Baimudan white at $21. Freshly brewed cups - black, green, oolong, white, ginger pu-er and a caffeine-free herbal - are $6, and there are cold-brewed teas at the same price. The shop also keeps a retail corner for sustainability-focused local designers and craft makers.

One thing to be clear about, because it changes what the venue is depending on when you arrive. Steep is not an alcohol-free room. From 4pm it turns into Steep After Dark, a low-lit lounge with a tea-infused cocktail programme - a chrysanthemum vodka drink, a black tea whisky build with housemade Sichuan peppercorn syrup - and it stays open to 11pm Wednesday through Sunday. The teas remain available throughout, and the bar has a habit of sending guests off with a small cup of high-grade green tea on the house. If you want the teahouse rather than the bar, come before four; if you want somewhere to sit at nine at night with a genuinely serious pot of tea in front of you, the evening works too, alongside people drinking.