Spanish tapas restaurant opening tonight on San Vicente in Brentwood in the old Vincenti space. Vincenti closed 3 months ago, which makes this an incredibly impressive turnaround. Jackson Kalb’s new restaurant Jemma di Mare in the former Bottlefish space is still not open a year after announcement, for sake of comparison.
Anyways, back to Teleferic. It’s a small family run group. The parents opened the first location in Spain in the 90s, and then two of the children opened a second location in Barcelona, before moving to the Bay Area and opening what is now three locations there. The Los Angeles location marks the first outside of Spain or the Bay Area, and the sixth total.
The restaurant opens today, and a small Spanish market/takeaway shop next door opens soon.
Excited to hear some reports, LA has been in dire need of more tapas restaurants for far too long!
Service Fee/Tipping
“Please note that Teleferic Barcelona adds a 20% Service Charge to each guest check. The service charge is not a gratuity, and enables the restaurant to provide equitable wages to all our employees including back of the house team members. It is our belief that every hourly employee contributes to your service and the overall guest experience. *Tips or gratuity on top are NOT expected.”
Disclaimer: I am biased because I fucking love tapas. In fact, I ate tapas last night at Jose Andres’ restaurant Jaleo. Yum!
I’m just a couple blocks away! excited to have this place with in walking distance Yeastie Boys was parked in front so I was checking it out while waiting for my sando
On the bill itself, the “not a gratuity” was just 18%. Another interesting tidbit is that, for the paella, the menu offers the option to request socarrat. I saw several orders of the paella (just the seafood varieties) on other tables and they looked and smelled good even just being nearby. Something I want to try next visit. I had the crab croquettes, which I liked (though the slice of tuna sashimi on top did not really add much to the croquette itself other than a visual element), and the prime Wellington (short rib and Ibérico ham in puff pastry), which was an interesting (tasty) variation on the normal. It came off more like a larger than normal empanada than a Wellington, though. They inject the pastry with gravy tableside using a large metal culinary syringe. Fun cocktail list at relatively reasonable prices, and three sangria variants by the glass from which to choose. Very different look from Vincenti but attractive, with several different areas in which to dine, including. a counter looking into the kitchen.
When you say a very different look than Vincenti, did they physically modify walls and other structural elements, or just do a reskin of the existing footprint of the space? I’m just so amazed that they got this thing up and running in 3 months and am perplexed how they pulled it off. It takes 3 months to remodel a flipping bathroom these days. I work in real estate and may need to look into hiring their contactor haha.
The former Vincenti space — a beloved neighborhood Italian restaurant that lasted 25 good years before closing in late 2022 — has been completely reimagined with loads of Spanish tile, blonde oak detailing, and an open kitchen. The space was designed by co-owner Maria Padrosa and Trenchs Studios, and sports a lounge area and two private rooms in addition to the primary dining area.
I never dined at Vincenti, so I can’t discern from the pictures the extent of the changes. Even if it was all non-structural, 3 months is still impressive.
I’ll be there Wednesday night with a big group, going to order as much of the menu as possible. Will report back after.
Really enjoyed the place but I think they need to settle in and work out some kinks.
You can specify soccorat or not - we did - but our baller tomahawk paella had very little. Chicken was dry. But the rice and beef were terrific. Will try a more traditional paella soon
Pan con tomate had very unevenly toasted bread, with barely any garlic, and a watery tomato topping. This needs a lot of work. But a few slices came with the omelet and these were much better
Jamon was perfect.
Tortilla (off menu but always available) was also perfect.
I would assume that a significant number of people not as much interested in food like people on this board could complain that a paella with soccorat isn’t properly made, e.g. burned etc. and send it back
Maybe a stupid question, but how “thick” should the paella be?
When I had a paella at a pop up many yrs ago (in Century City, I think), the layer of rice was so thin that it was basically all soccorat and it was basically black (hard to tell b/c of the lighting). I really like dolsot bibimbap and tahdig specifically because of the crunch, but this paella really did seem burned to me (and was quite unpleasant to eat b/c there wasn’t much of the rice that hadn’t been charred).
I’ve never had a “real” paella otherwise, so I’m not sure if that’s the way it’s supposed to be?
I too thought that pan con tomate had garlic, but the (many) examples that I had in Spain were all garlic free. Just very simple bread, tomato, olive oil, and salt for the most part. This is not a great time of year for ripe tomatoes so I wouldn’t be surprised that it wasn’t a standout dish.
That’s not a stupid question at all! I was quite surprised how thin the layer of rice was when we went to one of the paella specialists in Valencia. The rice was a single layer of grains in some parts of the pan. I actually wonder now if we there was a preference for more or less soccarat that we could have communicated, but did not know to. In our case it was not super great on this example (flavors were great though).
maybe it depends on the region? when i was in Barcelona and i asked about Paella, they (local driver) told us that certain regions had the thin layer of rice with socarrat for paella and some areas was a thicker layer without soccarat. i forgot which regions he said was known for socarrat but the one we got at Bar Canete was the soupy kind.
Yeastie Boys was parked in front so I was checking it out while waiting for my sando
