™Cafe Niña Puts Piloncillo in Its Pumpkin Latte and a Ghost in the Cup
Janet Cerda's coffee stand started in her Boyle Heights front yard. Her fall menu now also pours at a second shop in East L.A.
The pumpkin latte at Cafe Niña is sweetened with piloncillo, and if you ask, it comes with a ghost drawn on the inside of the cup.
That's where I'd go this week. Cafe Niña's fall menu is pouring at both of its shops: the original on East 4th Street in Boyle Heights and a newer brick-and-mortar spot on East Olympic Boulevard in East Los Angeles. That's according to a fall coffee guide LAist published Friday with Boyle Heights Beat. Nobody at the Globe has tasted it, so this isn't a verdict on flavor. It's a bet on the menu and the woman behind the counter.
She's Janet Cerda, Cafe Niña's owner. When L.A. TACO profiled her, she was serving coffee out of her front yard beside the 4th Street Bridge. Her coffee habit goes back to mornings with her grandmother, Dolores "Lolita." "She used to give me the galletas Maria, along with my café calientito (warm coffee) before going to school back in kindergarten," Cerda told L.A. TACO.
The fall lineup is short, and that helps. There's the Pumpkin Pillon Latte, pumpkin with piloncillo, and the Durazno Latte, built around peach cobbler, LAist reported. I'd order the pumpkin pillon and ask for the ghost. A peach cobbler latte makes a fine second round, but the piloncillo is the reason to skip the drive-thru.
Cerda isn't the only one on the Eastside reaching for piloncillo. Anhelo Coffee on 1st Street makes its own piloncillo pumpkin spice syrup for a latte and a cold brew, and Semillas Café y Flores tops a carrot cake latte with cream cheese cold foam, according to the same guide. What sets Niña apart is how far it's come: LAist describes it as a home-based coffee shop that grew into a storefront.
Plan around the clock. The original stand at 3264 E. 4th St. closes at 2 p.m. every day. It opens at 7 a.m. Tuesday through Friday and at 8:30 a.m. the other three days.
The East L.A. shop, at 3923 1/2 E. Olympic Blvd., is the afternoon option and stays open until 5 p.m. on weekdays. On weekends it opens at 7:30 a.m. and closes at 1 p.m., per LAist.
Cerda told L.A. TACO that coffee, to her, is "peace, community, and family." This fall it also comes with a ghost.
Source: LAist, retrieved October 9, 2026. Other sources: lataco.com.
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