LOS ANGELES — Dine Latino Restaurant Week, put on by the Latino Restaurant Association, has officially begun, and participating restaurants say support from customers this year is more important than ever.
Opening a Mexican restaurant that showcases the fresh seafood of Baja was a dream years in the making for Lucy Thompson-Ramirez and her husband. Twelve years ago, they opened Pez Cantina in Bunker Hill, in downtown Los Angeles.
Pez Cantina is one of the 200 restaurants taking part in Dine Latino Restaurant Week, offering special menu items at discounted prices. The participating restaurants represent cuisines from over 20 Latin countries.
Thompson-Ramirez noted that after sweeping immigration enforcement last summer drove away business, downtown restaurants need an event such as Dine Latino to encourage customers to return to the area.
“If I looked at our numbers, I’d say our business dropped about 40%,” she said.
Just a few blocks away, Lala’s Downtown is also part of Dine Latino, where owner Horacio Weschler Ferrari said he tries hard to recreate the convivial gatherings he used to have back in Argentina. He agreed downtown restaurants are still very much suffering the lingering effects of last summer’s immigration enforcement.
But more than that, Weschler Ferrari said, he’s hoping to reverse a trend he sees in dining — a sharp uptick in takeout orders — and get people back out to the restaurant in person.
“I see a big trend towards online ordering, especially in younger kids, that don’t experience what my generation did,” he said.
Lilly Rocha, executive director of the Latino Restaurant Association, explained that the past six years have been difficult for the industry at large.
“We just never really recovered from the initial COVID, and then the wildfires last year. Restaurants are just hurting right now,” Rocha said, adding that the best way to view all participating restaurants is through the Dine Latino interactive map on their website, which shows all the restaurants by county.
Dine Latino runs through May 24.
