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The odds of simply stumbling across Loto, a new café in Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood are low. That’s because the coffee shop is inside a house, specifically the cozy bungalow where owners Julian Scharman and Stephanie Hong live with their two daughters. It’s a “if you know, you know” destination, focusing on Mexican coffees with Japanese touches.
But we’ll tell you anyway: At the corner of Baxter Street and Lake Shore Avenue, look for the strip of cobalt blue painter’s tape on the front gate that reads “Loto, come on in.” Follow the stone pavers past the orange tree around back to the outdoor seating area where you can claim a spot along the stucco bench or up high in the terraced garden. Then head inside through the rear French doors where Scharman will make you espresso from Altura beans (sourced exclusively from the highlands of Chiapas) or serve you a baked good from local bakery Santa Canela. If it’s brisk out, slide into the nearby banquette and chat up the Loto team for awhile. “We want people to feel at home and not rushed,” says Hong.
The reason Loto can and does exist is thanks to L.A.’s MEHKO program (short for Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations), which, as of 2024, allows residents in most areas of the county to legally prepare, cook, and sell meals directly from their home kitchens. While there were hoops the pair had to jump through, like acquiring a food handler’s permit and coordinating a thorough inspection of their space and menu, opening the café was an organic transition, in part because they’d entrusted Alta Projects with an extensive renovation of the home five years ago.
“We barely had to change anything,” Scharman says of transforming part of the house into a café. The major upgrades they made for their recent opening were adding a half bathroom for visitors, replacing the fence with fresh cedar boards, and hooking up industrial-grade beverage machines. Because the couple are avid hosts in their everyday life, they had already taken cues from the restaurant world when they set out on the remodel, installing stainless steel surfaces in the kitchen and carving out a roomy dining banquette.
The other focus during the initial reno was making the most of the home’s 1,000-square-foot floorplan. Alta Projects principals Tito Pedraza and Tawni Bannister accomplished that by expanding the ceiling with trusses, opening up the kitchen to the living room, transplanting the main dining table outdoors, and sacrificing the kids’ bedroom closet for a bathroom that’s twice its original size.
When they got around to the steep backyard (“A jungle at the time,” Pedraza recalls), the designers proposed a long bench that could flex between traditional dining seating and a perch during cocktail parties. “I remember Julian scratching his head, thinking ‘Do we really need a bench this long?’” Pedraza says. Little did Scharman know then, it’d be an inviting spot for customers to sit with their cortados and laptops.
For a long time, brewing coffee drinks was just a hobby. “I’ve always had some geeky equipment,” Scharman admits. He’s even been throwing his own ceramic mugs and dishes for the last 20 years. But after seeing the house with fresh eyes, the release of MEHKO, and through Hong’s encouragement, he took the leap. Before the official launch, Scharman went down to Mexico City for a month and a half. In the mornings he trained under his chef friend Lucho Martinez as a barista at Café Tormenta; in the afternoons, he practiced his other craft at a ceramics studio.
The crash course was essential to making Loto function—it’s not easy running a café out of your home Wednesday through Friday, especially when you have two busy kids. While Scharman is doing cold brew prep in the evenings, Hong makes sure the space is ready for customers to come through at 8:30 a.m. the next day. “Every night it’s a mad dash to put toys away into bins and organize,” she says.
While an elegant cord rope politely tells guests where Loto ends and the Scharman household begins, you can see into the main living space and even the primary bathroom from the kitchen. It worked out that Alta Projects sourced a pair of ochre-hued Lawson-Fenning armchairs for the seating area and swathed the family’s bathroom in punchy blue tile. Hosting strangers in your house is a little less daunting when you know they won’t be judging your decor.
As the word of Loto spreads, Hong and Scharman are enjoying the new faces that come in. “It has changed our lives for the better,” says Hong. “We’ve met neighbors who live further up the block; our daughters play with other kids on our swing. It feels like a big dinner party every time our doors are open.” For Scharman, Loto makes a sprawling city like Los Angeles feel a bit smaller. So it’s no wonder customers aren’t shy about staying for three or four hours just to hang out.
