The combination of coffee and doughnuts is a dream made real at WhatCoffee, Rain Sun’s Santa Clara café.
The front counters are stocked with golden brown donuts the size of softballs. A shiny ganache coats the tops of the chocolate ones.
When bitten into, their centers burst open with a rich, chocolate cream. An unfilled brioche doughnut is dusted with sugar crystals while tufts of plain and lemon cream spill out of their respective crowns.
An army of croissants line up on the shelves beneath this wonderland of doughnuts, including pistachio, almond, plain and chocolate. Unexpectedly, the chocolate croissant’s filling was flecked with walnuts. Sun, who is a second-generation café owner, told me that the adjacent case of cakes fuses French baking techniques with Asian flavors.
Because WhatCoffee is currently in its soft opening phase, only one of the pretty desserts was labeled: chocolate mousse + chocolate caramel inside ($10.50). But the company’s social media account has posted enticing photos of a coconut mango mousse and espresso bean mousse cake, a bright orange mango cloud cake and glazed raspberry and mango doughnuts, which were sadly not on display at the time of my visit.
Sun is also slowly rolling out a savory menu featuring salads and sandwiches. “We’re at a super early stage so there’s many loose ends we need to figure out,” she said. When we spoke on a Sunday morning, WhatCoffee had sold approximately ten sandwiches by noon. They’ve introduced a weekend brunch menu too. Initially sales indicate that croissants are the hot ticket item. They’re freshly baked in-house every morning.
WhatCoffee’s beans are sourced from Sumatra, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Colombia and Brazil and are roasted on site. Customers can purchase whole beans, ground coffee or brew bags. And the café also serves a few specialty coffee drinks like the increasingly ubiquitous matcha latte and a coconut matcha latte.
The café’s name, WhatCoffee, implies a question that, Sun explained, is meant to pique people’s interest. A sideways question mark caps the logo. “What beans do they use? What will be on the menu tomorrow? All of that I wanted to spark people’s creativity.”
Sun describes opening her own café as a dream she’s held onto since she was young. “When I was helping at my family’s roastery and bakery, that was the foundation for me,” she said.
Sun hired the artist Mary Jhun to paint Ebb & Flow, a mural on the café’s main interior wall. The rest of the space is made up of clean, white walls, glass cases and tall glass windows.
Jhun’s “futuristic” vision appealed to Sun. When Jhun explored the space, she fell in love with the windows and the way the light hit “in these solid straight lines” along the mural wall. The image features coffee leaves, coffee cherries, lavender flowers and a whisk to symbolize the bakers. Sun felt that the mural faithfully represented “who we are, our creativity, as well as the products we produce.”
Although her family shut their business down due to the pandemic, Sun had no reservations about opening her own roastery and bakery. “It’s the right time for me and I learned so much from their business,” she said. “In the Bay Area, I know that it’s really hard to run a small business but the model I’m going for—we’ll be able to produce everything as a one-stop shop.”
WhatCoffee & Bakery, open Monday 7am–3pm, Tuesday–Saturday 7am–7pm, Sunday 8am–5pm. 1002 Monroe St., Santa Clara. IG:@whatcoffeeandbakery. whatcoffee.com
