Next time you visit the Arts District, head to CineOpera, an expansive rooftop patio where a DJ plays soft, bumping beats while Raging Bull plays on a large screen, all outlined against the backdrop of the setting sun.
The space
Guests gather on CineOpera’s rooftop patio in the Arts District, ringed by cacti and string lights.
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Yewon Perry Kim
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Courtesy CineOpera
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It’s the reimagined former space of LA Cha Cha Chá on 3rd St., what founder Alejandro Marin calls “your rooftop living room, big TV and all.” But that undersells it. CineOpera operates in quadruple time: part restaurant, part wine bar, part bottle shop, part open-air cinema — without the self-seriousness most rooftop spots wear like a cover charge. There’s a sense of quiet opulence here that doesn’t need to announce itself.
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A film plays on a large screen as the sun sets behind the downtown L.A. skyline.
The menu
The space is the newest effort from restaurant group Muy Salsa, whose roster includes Loreto in Frogtown and Santa Canela in Highland Park. Given that Muy Salsa built its name on Mexican coastal cuisine, you might expect something similar here. But Executive Chef Paco Moran, who also helms the kitchen at Loreto, took CineOpera somewhere else entirely.
CineOpera’s Panzanella: heirloom tomatoes, torn sourdough, and a crown of burrata that leaves a strong first impression.
Instead, Moran drew from an unlikely source: a documentary about Diego Maradona’s playing for SSC Napoli, where the Argentine legend became an adopted son of a city that was not his own.
“We’re not trying for Italian-Latin fusion,” Moran said. “We’re imagining what it would be like if you were an Italian cooking in Argentina, and vice versa.”
Start with the Panzanella ($16) — juicy heirloom tomatoes, crowned by a mound of burrata spilling its cream into the olive oil below. Dovetailing is the Beetello Tonnato ($17) — thin rounds of red beet topped with raw bluefin tuna, dressed in a creamy tonnata sauce, finished with capers, cilantro, and slow-building habanero heat. It’s a riff on vitello tonnato, the Piedmontese dish of cold veal draped in tuna sauce, except here Moran doubles down on the tonnata’s brininess rather than playing against it.
The Fritto Misto knows exactly what it’s doing: crispy calamari, fried eggplant, charred lemon, and a Calabrian chile aioli built for dunking.
Complete the trifecta with the Fritto Misto ($17) — crispy calamari rings and fried eggplant mixed with fries, topped with fried parsley, served with Calabrian chile aioli and charred lemon. The crisp snap of the calamari against the eggplant’s soft give kept pulling me back for one more bite.
The bottle shop
The real discovery at CineOpera wasn’t on the plate — it was in the glass. The wine program, curated by manager and sommelier Jesse Brickel, might be the most comprehensive selection of natural Italian wines I’ve come across lately, and it doubles as a bottle shop: glasses run $12 to $15, bottles $31 to $130, or buy any bottle off the shelf at retail price and drink it right there for a $10 corkage — or just take it home.
The philosophy —”We want you to enjoy wine this good. and still be able to afford rent” — is included on the wine list.
Brickel, CineOpera’s sommelier, backs that up in person. “We describe the list as ‘bangers only,'” he said. “We want to be able to grab any bottle off the shelf and know it’s going to hit.”
It’s the kind of pairing — menu copy and staff conviction both — most rooftop spots would never dare print. Proof that the markup game isn’t the point here.
By the time the credits rolled, nobody at CineOpera seemed to be watching the screen anymore — they were refilling glasses instead. And no one seemed to be in a hurry to prove otherwise.
Location: 812 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles
Hours: Wed–Sun, 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.
No reservations.