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I’ve never had a bad night at Barra Santos. It has all the familiarity, intimacy, and tight spaces I associate with a great night out, minus the club-level decibels and accompanying hangover. It fulfills the part of me that wants to feel like I’m having a big night, while acknowledging the realities of my life as a (mostly) responsible adult human who has to get up and take care of my family in the morning.
God bless our restaurants, Los Angeles, but a good number of them never figured out that they could do more with less — less space, less menu, less garnish. Barra Santos’ narrow galley-like interior is a workhorse, just large enough to attract some 28 guests with its quirky sense of magical realism. Its door arches are patterned deep blue and white in licensed reproductions of azulejos, traditional glazed Portuguese tiles that murmur “charming seaside Porto bodeguita.”
The warm red brick wall is notched with the most miniscule, floating two-tops you’ve ever rested three plates and two glasses on, and the 25-foot red oak bar commands most of the room. The vivid black and white photos on the walls tell stories of fado singers in Portugal, where partner and director of operations Mike Santos lived as a young child. After a night of sipping on sherry and porto, you’d swear you were about to step out onto patterned 16th-century cobblestones instead of the cold Los Angeles concrete.
On a busy night, you strike up a conversation with your comrades-in-waiting at the bathroom line. I am not annoyed; I crave this casual connection after two-and-a-half deadening hours a day in the car.
The Portuguese-influenced cuisine, with seafood from Portugal and Greece and fresh produce from the farmers’ market, and helmed by Nogales-raised chef-partner Melissa López, strikes the right balance of unpretentious and creative. There are five small plates and seven large plates on the menu, no more — and every single one hits. Ordering as a group of four, which can feel tortured at restaurants with bloated menus, feels easy here. The snap peas and broccoli arrive beautifully arranged on dishes by Portugal-based Costa Nova, while the scallops arrive on small metal plates Santos — it’s the little details that matter here.
My friends and I wander over from an afternoon drinking mascarpone foam lattes at Loquat, wait a while for a table, then crowd it with glasses of wine and sherry, nibbling on tasty little snacks: nuts, goat cheese, Iberico ham and Aloreña olives marinated in orange and coriander.
Muted from a day of staring at computers and phones, we need apps to awaken. The sweet, citrusy scent of Meyer lemon, both zested and juiced onto the tuna crudo, wafts its way to our noses before we even see it; then, the bright pink cubes materialize before us in a light olive oil and orange sauce, studded with cracked black peppercorns. The textures across the menu are playful, graduating from that supple tuna to the crunchy, zesty snap pea salad dressed richly in tarragon creme fraiche.
The sauces are bold and bright at Barra Santos: the scallops in fresno chili and coriander butter, and the whole confit chicken leg in a spicy piri piri. We need at least two orders of the bifana sandwich, which layers tender slices of grilled pork with a piso sauce made with cilantro, garlic, lemon, and a touch of fish sauce. Sharing is easy: the sandwich comes sliced in threes or fours. If going home after all that sounds bad, we end with port (as the menu notes: “Drink like a lord. Crafted by the Portuguese to sell to the English to screw the French.”) and cheese, or simple desserts: spiced almond cake and passionfruit sorbet.
If I’m alone, I sit at the bar. You do a creative dance when your barstools are as tightly packed as they are at Barra Santos, but I don’t mind it. What was many scenes become one: a mishmash of your bacalhau fritters playing bumper cars with your neighbor’s piri piri chicken, your back brushing your neighbor’s. On a busy night, you strike up a conversation with your comrades-in-waiting at the bathroom line. I am not annoyed; I crave this casual connection after two-and-a-half deadening hours a day in the car.
You can lose sense of time at Barra Santos, which I suspect is by design. Last Word venues all feel this way to me–particularly Found Oyster and Barra Santos, but all of the restaurants have a hyper-specific setting, a moment in time and place that allows you to know exactly where you are, and then to relax. At Barra Santos, it’s both place and cuisine that anchor you. The history radiating from the restored wood beams and the warmth from Lopez’s charred cabbage and white beans mirror one another to transportive effect.
I sometimes find myself wandering down the street from Loquat “just to see” what’s happening at Barra Santos, when my feet meant to go home. If the neuroscience of body memory has anything to say about it, the memories I’ve made flirting with bartenders, juicing my friends for gossip, talking to randoms, eating too many oysters, and laughing over wine just want to activate again. They say that running a restaurant is like throwing a party every night, and at Barra Santos manages to make you feel like you’re in it all together, if just for one night.
