STAND.

Waiting in line on Miracle Mile on a hot August day isn’t exactly the ideal start to lunch, but it was nevertheless apropos of the experience I was about to have. You see, I was waiting to enter STAND.—the diminutive Japanese café from the team behind Shingo. So, stand I did.

By this point, STAND. had been in its soft-opening stage for about two months, and the daily crowds had not thinned. Waiting for my turn to order at the counter at 11:30am, I peered through the glass and noticed quite a varied crowd—students, men in suits, a woman with a very cute, fluffy dog and a brazen couple working on laptops, sipping watered-down matchas. A bold move in such a tiny café, but aspirational, if I’m being honest.

Popular items tend to sell out quickly, but I didn’t face any issues placing an order for the chicken katsu bento box (a substantial lunch served with white rice and three sides, well-priced at $18.95); the BLT sando (served on the softest, crustless milk bread with perfectly crisp bacon strips); and the BEC toast (jammy egg and bacon bits on thick-cut milk bread, made a tad too rich by the miso béchamel). Both dine-in and takeout orders are boxed neatly in clear, branded containers—cute and portable.

Dessert was a cream pan and a chocolate pan, both doughy and rich, arriving warm and freshly toasted for a sweet-and-savory ending to an already decadent midday meal. Luckily, there was plenty of hōjicha and ceremonial-grade matcha to keep me from napping at my desk post-lunch. I usually skip the sweetener, but the potent green tea latte needed a heavy lift from the housemade strawberry jam.

If you happen to walk by and see a line, don’t be discouraged like the loud pedestrian I brushed shoulders with before entering (“I’m not waiting in a line!” she called out). It moves quickly, service is speedy and, really, standing for a bite at STAND. only makes sense.