Through November 15, you can take your coffee like a Wes Anderson character at Café Le Sans Blague, a promotional pop-up at Dayglow Coffee touting the director’s pandemic-delayed latest movie, The French Dispatch, which premieres tonight in select theaters. Available at both Silver Lake and West Hollywood Dayglow locations, as well as in Chicago, Le Sans Blague will be serving a menu of four caffeinated drinks inspired by the film, which received a standing ovation at Cannes earlier this year.
Dayglow patrons can also pick up copies of a French Dispatch magazine filled with behind-the-scenes articles and other movie-related bits and bobs. If its cover looks like a lol-so-quirky carbon copy of the New Yorker, that’s because it is: The creative genesis of Anderson’s newest movie lies in the upper middlebrow magazine's early days. Its founding editors, Harold Ross and William Shawn, inspired the character Arthur Horowitz, Jr. (Bill Murray) in the film.
Although two of the menu’s drinks, “The Cycling Reporter” and “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner,” may resemble a French 75 and glass of red wine, neither contain alcohol. Instead, they’re made with booze-free champagne from Dayglow’s Silver Lake location neighbor, Soft Spirits, and Verjus Rouge, a non-alcoholic red wine (that’s basically unripe grape juice).
The other promotional drinks, “The Concrete Masterpiece” and “Revisions to a Manifesto,” come in bright yellow Le Sans Blague mugs. Sweetened with light brown Demerara sugar, the cinnamon-topped “The Concrete Masterpiece” tastes like a milder Spanish latte. Served black, “Revisions to a Manifesto” is a Belleville French roast whose menu description concludes with a terse postscript: “No crying.”
Priced from $6 to $12, Dayglow’s French Dispatch-inspired drinks straddle the price point between specialty coffee and alcohol-free cocktails—though who wouldn’t want to role-play as a wine mom at eight in the morning? Patrons who order off the limited time menu can also choose from one of the movie’s swag items: a five pin collection, a notebook, a pencil case filled with green pencils or the ever-trusty reusable promotional tote bag.
Customers who stop in and buy a Le Sans Blague drink by end of day today (Thursday, October 21) will also be entered in a raffle for the entire French Dispatch swag collection, plus a T-shirt with Timothée Chalamet's face on it, with the winner announced on Friday. At the end of the pop-up, Dayglow's team will do giveaways for Le Sans Blague's yellow mugs.
Through November 15, you can visit Dayglow Coffee’s Le Sans Blague promotional pop-up at:
866 Huntley Drive, West Hollywood, daily 7am–5pm
3206 W Sunset Blvd, Silver Lake, daily 7am–7pm.