There’s a new reservation worth making before your next night at the Phil. La Nena Cantina, the coastal Mexican concept that’s been packing patios in Malibu and Hollywood, has opened its third location inside The Music Center, tucked at the base of Frank Gehry’s stainless-steel curves at 141 S Grand Avenue. It’s the kind of pairing that shouldn’t work on paper, a beach-inspired cantina inside one of the most architecturally serious buildings in the country, and yet, standing at the bar with a mezcal cocktail in hand and the Walt Disney Concert Hall rising overhead, it makes total sense.
A Cantina Inside a Gehry Landmark
Context matters here. The Music Center is L.A.’s performing arts campus, home to the LA Phil, LA Opera, Center Theatre Group, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, spread across four theaters and the twelve-acre Gloria Molina Grand Park next door. La Nena’s DTLA location opened August 6, 2026, joining a growing food and beverage roster on campus that includes Abernethy’s, Kendall’s Brasserie, The Mullin Wine Bar, Sip & Sonder, and the recently opened Plaza Grill. What sets La Nena apart from a typical venue restaurant is that it isn’t playing a supporting role. This is a full 150-seat room with its own identity, built to pull people downtown on nights when nothing is even on the marquee.
The location sits at the foot of the Walt Disney Concert Hall , the Frank Gehry-designed home of the LA Phil and one of the most photographed buildings in Los Angeles — facing onto Jerry Moss Plaza. For a restaurant built around coastal, sun-bleached Mexican flavors, it’s an unlikely backdrop: all steel curves and sharp civic geometry instead of the beach. But that tension is exactly what makes the DTLA outpost feel distinct from its siblings rather than a straight copy-paste.
Who’s Behind La Nena
La Nena Cantina is the work of restaurateur Vicente Del Rio and his wife, Andrea Nales, under their Hospitality 70 Group. The pair built their reputation with Frida Mexican Cuisine , more than 25 years of Los Angeles hospitality experience between them , before launching La Nena in 2025 as a distinct concept: coastal-inspired, all-day dining with the relaxed sophistication of California living layered over traditional Mexican technique. Hollywood and Malibu came first, and quickly built a following for tableside guacamole, scratch-made cocktails, and handmade tortillas pressed to order. DTLA is the third location and the first to plant the brand firmly in the urban core, aimed as much at pre-show diners as at the broader downtown community.
“This expansion allows us to share the vibrant flavors and coastal spirit that define our food with a new audience, while also creating something unique for the community,” Del Rio said of the opening, framing the Music Center location as a dining experience meant to complement the creativity on stage rather than simply feed people before curtain.
The Menu, Course by Course
The DTLA kitchen runs the same deep menu as Hollywood and Malibu, built in tiers that reward slow grazing rather than a single entrée-and-done meal. Entradas set the tone: tableside guacamole ($19), Oaxacan queso fundido with the option to add chorizo or mushroom, elote-style street corn, and nachos piled with pico de gallo and jack cheese. From there, the ceviche and aguachile section is arguably the strongest showcase of the coastal identity the brand leans on — a ceviche de pescado, a mixto with fish, shrimp and octopus, a shrimp aguachile in lime-serrano sauce, and a tiradito de hamachi finished with chili paste, lime, and soy that reads more Baja-Nikkei than straight Jalisco. Diners who can’t decide order the ceviche tasting, a three-way sampler of pescado, camarón, and aguachile.
Tacos remain the backbone of the menu and the clearest through-line from the original locations. The classics are all here, carnitas cooked low and slow, a quesabirria served with its own cup of consommé for dipping, pastor bright with pineapple and morita salsa, carne asada finished with green avocado sauce, alongside a few less expected entries like the New York taco, built on a flour tortilla with angus NY steak and a layer of cheese custard. For anyone who wants the format without the commitment, the taco tasting lines up five: asada, pollo, pastor, carnitas, and pollo mole.
Beyond individual tacos, La Nena’s signature taco plates function almost like a tasting menu of the kitchen’s range — Tacos Malibu pairs a Baja-style fish taco with grilled shrimp and a zarandeado taco; Tacos Norteños leans into marinated skirt steak and grilled onion; Tacos de Rib Eye does exactly what it sounds like. From there the menu opens into heartier territory: fajitas across chicken, pastor, salmon, shrimp, and steak; mole negro and mole poblano built on Oaxacan chocolate-chile bases; and a run of mariscos anchored by pan-seared halibut in lemon-butter sauce and camarones al ajillo in a garlic-white-wine reduction.
The showpiece, though, is the molcajete — La Nena Molcajete arrives still hot in its volcanic-stone bowl, loaded with grilled chicken, grilled skirt steak, cilantro chorizo, avocado, cactus, and panela cheese under a tomatillo salsa, with a seafood version (Molcajete de Mariscos) built around grilled shrimp, white fish, and octopus for anyone who wants the same theater with a coastal lean. It’s the kind of dish built for a table, not a solo diner, and it’s easy to see why it functions as the centerpiece order on busy nights.
The Bar Program: Mezcal, Margaritas, and More
If the kitchen carries the coastal identity, the bar carries the energy. The cocktail list runs long and margarita-forward, but it resists staying in one lane. The classics are all present — a Clásica Margarita built on tequila and an OJ reduction, a Cadillac Margarita finished with Grand Marnier, frozen versions in classic, strawberry, and mango — but the more interesting drinks lean into mezcal and Mexican bitters: a Mezcalita built on 400 Conejos mezcal, a Mezcal Negroni that swaps the usual gin for smoke, a Pasión de Tamarindo pairing mezcal with tamarind soda, and a Mezcalita de Jamaica built on hibiscus reduction. The Oaxaca Mule takes the format furthest afield, combining mezcal with cucumber, passion fruit, and ginger beer.
For anyone leaning savory, a trio of micheladas builds in intensity — La Nena’s base version with beer and salted lime, the Especial adding sangrita and a chili-salted rim, and the Cubana going all the way with Maggi, Tabasco, and Inglesita. Beer runs through the expected Mexican staples on draft and in bottles — Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo, Pacífico, Corona and Corona Premier — alongside an IPA for anyone stepping outside the lager lane. Non-drinkers aren’t an afterthought either: four mocktails, including a ginger-rosemary Elixir Refresher and a hibiscus-lime Jamaica Refresher, are built with the same care as the cocktail list rather than treated as a footnote.
The bar program is worth a special note for the pre-show crowd. La Nena has built specialty seasonal cocktails exclusive to the DTLA location, designed to move quickly enough to catch curtain time without feeling rushed, alongside a curated pre-show menu meant to get diners in and out before a performance starts.
The Room and the Ritual
What makes the DTLA location work is less about any single dish and more about the friction between setting and menu. This is a 150-seat restaurant sitting in the shadow of one of the most serious pieces of architecture in the country, serving food built around a beach town’s unhurried pace. Reservations lean toward the pre-show rush — tables turning fast between 5 and 7:30 before curtain — but the room settles into something slower once the evening performances start and the plaza empties out. That’s arguably the better time to visit: the molcajete arriving tableside with no one checking a watch, a mezcal negroni instead of a rushed paloma, Gehry’s steel catching the last of the evening light through the windows.
Plan Your Visit
The DTLA location runs Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 11 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., though hours shift around performance schedules. It’s cashless-only, so leave the bills at home. Reservations run through OpenTable, and given the address, weekend and pre-show slots are the ones to book ahead.
For a magazine built around the intersection of image and appetite, La Nena’s DTLA opening is an easy story: a restaurant this considered, in a building this iconic, was always going to be worth the trip downtown.
La Nena Cantina — Downtown LA At The Music Center, 141 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012 · (213) 972-3548 Reservations via OpenTable · lanenacantina.com