LA Cha Cha Chá

Jicama, chile, and the Los Angeles pass

Jicama comes to the bench for crunch before the grill heat takes over; Alejandro Guzman, Executive Chef at LA Cha Cha Chá in Los Angeles, builds that contrast into the work. His cooking here starts with ingredients handled early and often, a habit that reaches back to North Hollywood, where he began at age 12 in his mother’s Mexican restaurant, El Taco Loco, washing dishes, cleaning tables, and later working the grill. The current station gathers a wider apprenticeship than a single kitchen line. Guzman has moved through family restaurant labor, front-of-house service, back-of-house discipline, beverage work, a sandwich counter, and composed restaurant cooking before taking the Executive Chef role at this rooftop address. His résumé names a sous chef post at Le Comptoir in 2019, the first beverage director role at Sqirl, and a chef role at Fabby’s Sandwicherie in 2023. At LA Cha Cha Chá, that spread shows in plates that understand both timing and ease. He does not treat Mexican food as a museum object, or Los Angeles produce as decoration. He works between them, holding flavor memory in one hand and the city’s abundance in the other.

California abundance through a Mexican register

Guzman has stated the method plainly: “I don’t like to recreate Mexican dishes directly because in Los Angeles they would be out of place. I rather aim for a flavor profile or experience found in traditional Mexican cuisine and magnify it using California abundance.” That sentence is useful because it names the discipline without turning it into a posture. The menu moves through botanas, principales, and tacos, with tostadas, ceviche, fillings, salsas, and handmade tortillas carrying much of the program’s structure. Texture does steady work here. Jicama gives snap; pipián rojo brings seed, chile, and savor; roasted heat builds under the surface rather than taking over the plate. Signature dishes associated with Guzman include Tostada Terraza, Tostada Monumento, and Carrot Flan, each pointing toward a kitchen interested in form as much as reference. The restaurant’s Mexican cooking is filtered through California produce and modern plating, but the method stays practical: acid where a dish needs lift, chile where it needs warmth, and enough restraint to let the ingredient keep its shape.

An open roof above the Arts District

The room works differently from a sealed dining room. LA Cha Cha Chá occupies an 11,600-square-foot rooftop in the Arts District, planted with cacti, palm trees, and greenery under string lighting, with downtown Los Angeles held close enough to remain part of service. The design nods toward Acapulco and Palm Springs, but the industrial edges of the neighborhood keep the place from floating away into resort language. The pass has to answer that setting. Food crosses from kitchen to terrace into air, light, and skyline, so the plates need clarity rather than fragility. The beverage program sits near the same logic, built around classic cocktails with mezcal and tequila, with wine also present at the table. Nothing about the space asks the kitchen to whisper. It asks for balance, for food with enough structure to hold its own on a large roof without losing the hand that made it.

The dish that holds the method

The clearest reading of the house may be Lengua en Salsa Verde, made with Wagyu beef tongue, purslane, and tostada crumble. It carries the room’s bridge between Mexico City reference and Los Angeles setting without flattening either one. Guzman’s next move has not been publicly set out by the restaurant, so the better close is the work already on the pass: seed, acid, chile, and crunch gathered into Tostada Terraza.