Broken Spanish Comedor: The Modern Mexican Kitchen Culver City Has Been Waiting For

When Broken Spanish closed its Downtown LA location in 2020, it felt like one of those COVID losses you eventually stopped grieving because grieving didn’t bring the restaurant back. Chef Ray Garcia’s modern Mexican kitchen had been one of the best in the city — ambitious, rooted, and completely its own thing. Five years later, it’s back. And if you want to find the best modern Mexican restaurant in Culver City right now, the answer is obvious: Washington Blvd, just past Lincoln.

Broken Spanish Comedor landed in the old Best Bet space in late 2025, and the rebirth comes with a shift in register. Where the original was grand — a big Downtown room, big prices, big occasion energy — the Comedor is something more useful: a neighborhood restaurant you can actually eat at on a Tuesday. The menu is smaller plates, the prices are sane ($15–$22 for most dishes), and the whole thing feels like Garcia exhaled and cooked the food he actually wants to cook rather than the food a Michelin inspector might reward him for.

The Room

Walk in and the lighting drops immediately — the kind of barely-there illumination that makes everyone look better and signals that the kitchen has something to prove. The A-frame dining room is compact and warm, with exposed wood, close-set tables, and a Latin-funk playlist that earns its volume. There’s a heated patio out back for the nights when you want the sky above you and a margarita in hand. It’s not a room that’s trying hard to be cool. It just is.

“The enchiladas are from his mother’s recipe. Chicken, leek, feta, tomatillo salsa, homemade crema. Every table orders them. Every table finishes them.”

What to Order at the Best Modern Mexican Restaurant on the Westside

Start with the chicharrón in garlic mojo. It arrives crackling and collapsing at the same time, coated in a garlicky oil that soaks into the pork skin just enough to give it body without killing the crunch. Order two. Next, the refried lentils — somewhere between dal and traditional frijoles, earthy and rich, the kind of side dish that makes you reconsider your entire approach to legumes.

The duck meatball albondigas are where the kitchen starts showing off. Duck, bacon, chipotle, and nopales in a broth that’s simultaneously smoky and bright — it’s a dish that would read as clever on paper but eats as pure comfort. The foot-long smoked tuna flauta is a statement: crispy shell, deeply savory fish, impossible to split fairly between two people (order your own). And then the enchiladas: mom’s recipe, chicken, leek, feta, tomatillo salsa, homemade crema. Every table orders them. Every table finishes them.

The Mezcal List

There are eight cocktails on the list, and all of them are worth ordering. The Rebelde tastes like spiked jamaica — tangy, hibiscus-forward, boozy in the best way. The house margarita comes with sea salt foam and just enough agave sweetness to balance the tequila. But the real story is the mezcal: over 100 bottles not on the standard list, curated with the kind of specificity that suggests Garcia has very strong opinions about agave terroir. Ask the server for a recommendation based on what you’re eating. They always know.

Why Culver City Needed This

Culver City has been on a run — the dining scene on Washington Blvd and its surrounding blocks has quietly become one of the more interesting stretches in West LA. Broken Spanish Comedor slots into that conversation as its most exciting new entry. It’s not a taqueria, it’s not a traditional Mexican restaurant, and it’s not fusion in the hand-wavy, difficult-to-define sense. It’s Alta California cooking — Mexican tradition refracted through LA ingredients and Garcia’s own obsessions. At a price point that keeps it accessible for a regular weeknight, it’s exactly the kind of place the Westside has been missing since the original closed.