[Specialty, from L7]

PLENTY of coffee drinkers are not looking for “new.” They might be open to the latest experimental natural wine, or rotate flavors of boba to see if they prefer yuzu or passion fruit, but won’t vary from the morning vanilla latte or dark roast with three sugars. Coffee is the stuff of daily routines and personal rituals.

This is true in my household. I have come to coffee obsession late in life, really in the four years I’ve been with The Times. I’ve been a serious tea drinker for much longer; pour-overs, as I’m reminded by visiting friends who want their joe strong and viscous and don’t appreciate my fiddly efforts, are as close to tea as brewed coffee veers.

During a few recent, rewarding and jittery weeks spent criss-crossing the metro area for coffee research, I started from my purist’s stance: I drank mostly pour-overs and straight espresso shots or minimum-milk macchiatos. Clarity of coffee flavor was the sole objective.

Kumquat changes its lineup of coffees monthly, including additions of restrained, calibrated coffee drinks. For February, the shop introduced a Valentine’s-themed concoction: the Ruby Marocchino espresso mixed with hot chocolate ganache and pineberry syrup. It tasted like strawberries and pineapple dipped in chocolate, plus coffee. I couldn’t deny the appeal. It reminded me that part of the greatness of L.A. — coffee and otherwise — is an openness to creative statement. I began to imbibe with a more open mind.

This is how I came to admire the espresso tonic at Mandarin Coffee Stand in Pasadena. Sherry Gao uses homemade pineapple jam rather than a typical citrus accent, and it pings the drink with equal sweetness and tartness. At Thank You Coffee in Chinatown and Anaheim, the signature blue pandan milk turns more gray than cerulean, but pandan’s herbalvanilla flavor weds with the coffee to create a haunting third taste.

Any limiting dogma that remained in me dissolved when I walked into Dudley Market in Venice a couple of Sundays ago. I was there for the Hooked coffee pop-up that runs out of the restaurant most mornings. I didn’t know much about Hooked when I arrived; a trusted colleague had recommended it. The barista had his back to me when I approached the counter; he pulled espresso shots while carrying on a conversation with a woman sitting at the bar near his workstation. When the barista turned around, I realized who it was: Christopher “Nicely” Abel Alameda, a legend in the L.A. coffee scene who has won multiple latte art competitions.

You don’t forget Alameda. He’s one of those people who seems as if a sunlike source of light surges out of him. I met him last year when he was manning the bar at the Silver Lake location of Dayglow. I was looking for advice on which beans to buy, and he had plenty to say. He moved fast, talked fast and had a bedrock confidence about coffee that came off as reassuring rather than arrogant.

I asked him at Hooked what I should order. He suggested a cafe rico, an espresso drink from his days as the founding barista at Menotti’s Coffee Shop less than a mile away. It’s nicknamed after the century-old Puerto Rican coffee company. Alameda scents a cortado with orange, vanilla and cinnamon — nothing outlandish or alchemical but a drink in perfect proportions. The swerving, heart-shaped art drawn with foamed milk was, as ever, gorgeous. It’s a modern L.A. classic, as satisfying in its own way as Benchakul’s pour-overs.

Coffee, at home or out in the world, is so much about personal taste. But in the land of possibility, if you trust a favorite barista, you never know what wonderful universes might open at the bottom of a cup.