When you ask Diana Lua what initially inspired her to make gelato, she’ll point to her children. She has four boys between the ages of 12 and 17, and when her twins were diagnosed with autism, she became even more attuned to her family’s physical and emotional needs.

“If you are a mother of children on the spectrum, you celebrate little wins,” Lua says. “We like to celebrate by eating ice cream, but one day I went to the store to grab a tub and saw all the ingredients, preservatives and artificial flavor and coloring in the ice cream at my local store, and I almost dropped that box. I know they wanted it, but it was too much sugar.”

Determined to make a healthy swap instead of avoiding sweet treats altogether, “I went home immediately and told my husband about opening a gelato and coffee shop,” she says.

The shop would sell clean eats and good coffee and be an inclusive haven—a place where her sons could be themselves and so could all other community members.

And she had the culinary confidence to do so. After immigrating to the San Fernando Valley from the Philippines years ago, she took cooking courses so she knew her way around a kitchen. She even took specific classes in making gelato.

Tang & Java debuted in 2021 in Woodland Hills, in a typical Valley strip mall on Ventura Boulevard. Sandwiched between a nail salon and a donut shop, the store is named for China’s King Tang of the Shang Dynasty, who introduced Marco Polo to a dessert-like ice cream made with buffalo milk and rice and frozen on top of the mountain, she explains. “Java in Indonesia was the first region to grow coffee commercially in the 1600s.”

While the space may be petite, with seating for about a dozen people, the menu is mighty. There are 16 flavors of seasonal housemade gelato and sorbet options available on any given day. When I visited, the choices ranged from a dairy-free kiwi and strawberry to a Hokkaido cheese flavor (made with Japanese cheese that’s on the sweet side). Lua’s ube gelato, made with fresh purple yam, is a beautiful pastel purple and deliciously creamy.

Lua’s specialties, which represent different cultures in her community, include the Halva Me, with a fior di latte gelato base (made with fresh milk, heavy cream and sugar) and topped with tahini, halva (a traditional Middle Eastern confection), pine nuts and sesame brittle; and the Latin-leaning Ole Ole, a mango sorbet adorned with tajin, chamoy and tamarind.

Halo Mix, a blend of nata de coco, kaong fruit, ube, jackfruit and crispy rice, topped with leche flan, is an invitation into her culture, a twist on the icy Filipino dessert halo- halo. While the treat is traditionally made with evaporated milk and ice, her version uses her fior di latte gelato as the base.

“I wanted to capture food for everyone,” Lua says when asked about her signature treats. “And I’m using simple ingredients that you know, that you can pronounce, and no preservatives.”

Since Lua often procures her goods from the Saturday morning Calabasas farmers’ market or local farms, the season impacts her gelato- making. Some items, like durian and jackfruit, she hunts for at grocers like Ranch 99 and Island Paradise. The treasures she finds dictate her menu.

“Everything changes,” she says. “If ube is available, I make ube gelato. If it’s fig season, I’ll mix mascarpone and figs. Wherever I can get very good ingredients, that’s what I use with my gelato. I really pour my heart into it because I want to give people something different. And once you taste it, you can tell the difference.”

As for the Java part of the shop’s name, there’s an inspired menu of specialty coffees and lattes with drinks like Golden Turmeric latte, espressos and matchas. Lua makes the coffee drinks with beans locally roasted to her specifications. There are also non-coffee drinks, like the Hawaiian Island Refresher, with guava, strawberry and basil.

A Sunday-only treat includes Bibingka, a Filipino baked rice cake served in coconut leaves. You can also order poffertjes, Dutch treats that resemble small, fluffy pancakes.

Lua does more than support her customers’ cravings; she also supports the community. Nearly every month Tang & Java hosts a fundraiser for a local school or organization.

And Lua is more than happy to give back. Life is sweet when we lift one another up, she says.

• Tang & Java Gelato and Coffee
  22776 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills
  TangAndJava.com