Ray Garcia Brought Broken Spanish Back, in the Old A-Frame on Washington

A pandemic closure, a five-year absence, and a comeback in an A-frame on the Culver City line.

Broken Spanish Comedor is Ray Garcia's return to the restaurant that made his name. The original Broken Spanish, downtown near what was then Staples Center, closed during the pandemic, and its absence left a real gap in Mexican American fine dining in this city. The Comedor opened in October at 12565 Washington Boulevard, at the edge of Culver City and Mar Vista.

The building has its own history. It is the A-frame on Washington that once housed Roy Choi's A-Frame, which is a fitting inheritance for a chef who has spent his career arguing that Los Angeles Mexican cooking deserves the same seriousness as anything else in the city.

Who Ray Garcia is

Garcia is a Los Angeles native and one of the defining figures in Alta California cooking, the blending of Mexican culinary tradition with California produce and Los Angeles sensibility. Esquire named him Chef of the Year in 2015. Anthony Bourdain featured the original Broken Spanish on the 2017 Los Angeles episode of Parts Unknown.

He has described the Comedor as a neighborhood offshoot with the same quality and the same passion, built around a community-centric approach. The name change is doing work: a comedor is a dining room, the everyday kind, and that is the register he is aiming for.

The nixtamal program

The detail that separates this from a nostalgia reopening is the corn. The kitchen runs an in-house nixtamal program using landrace corn, which means the masa is made on site from heirloom varietals rather than bought in. That is a significant amount of daily labor and it is the reason the tortillas and tamales here are worth ordering rather than treating as a vehicle.

The Michelin Guide added Broken Spanish Comedor as a 2026 recommendation, with inspectors pointing to the kanpachi ceviche, the aguachile negro with bay scallops, the roasted mushroom, spinach and honeynut squash tamal en cazuela, and the crispy pork belly chicharron in garlic mojo, which they describe as unskippable.

From the menu

Signatures carried over from the original include the chicharron, served with garlic mojo, pickled red cabbage and salsa morita, and the refried lentils, which sit somewhere between dal and traditional refried beans. Newer dishes are built around the masa program. The bar list leans heavily on agave.

What we have our eye on: the tamal en cazuela, because a tamal served in a casserole rather than a husk is an unusual choice and the honeynut squash version sounds built for fall. FJM will report back after a visit.

Visiting

Broken Spanish Comedor is at 12565 Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066, on the Culver City and Mar Vista line. Reach the restaurant at (747) 946-7118.

• Hours: dinner daily from 4 p.m., closing at 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Weekend service also runs 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

• Happy hour: Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p.m. at the bar.

• Reservations: on OpenTable. Walk-ins are welcome, though Michelin notes the crowds.

• Parking: valet on site is $15, operated by Dragonfly Parking. Signage on Washington is easy to drive past, so watch for the A-frame.

• Takeout and delivery: available, ordered through the restaurant.

OpenTable's editorial team covered the reopening in more depth.

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