ALTO, the open-fire South American restaurant that landed on the Michelin Guide California list within months of opening, has turned its bar into a showcase for the everyday street food of Argentina and Uruguay. The Studio City spot at 12969 Ventura Blvd. now offers a casual menu built around choripán sandwiches, vermouth cocktails and charcoal-cooked potatoes, running Tuesday through Sunday alongside its more formal dinner service.
According to LAist, the new bar concept draws directly on Argentina's rotiserías, the neighborhood takeout shops that specialize in ready-to-eat comfort food across Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Co-founder and chef Juana Castellanos and executive chef Esteban Klenzi grew up around the Río de la Plata, the estuary region that gives Argentina and Uruguay their shared rioplatense identity even though an 1828 treaty brokered under British pressure split the two nations apart.
The bar's signature dish, called the Real Deal, is ALTO's take on a choripán sandwich, built with short rib and smoked pork. Klenzi told LAist he chose the choripán over a more familiar option for the menu, opting against a burger, and priced it at $18. Another standout, Banderita & Frites, pairs a thin cut of short rib with smashed potatoes cooked in a charcoal oven with beef tallow and supplied by Weiser Family Farms; that dish runs $39. Notably, Klenzi refuses to serve French fries, according to the same account.
A Bar Menu Rooted in Fine Dining Pedigree
The casual pivot might seem like a departure for a restaurant that has collected serious culinary credentials in under a year. Castellanos and Klenzi came through fine dining, including a stretch in Spain's Basque Country, before opening ALTO's live-fire concept in August 2025 after two and a half years of development, as reported by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association. Their time working together began at Mugaritz, the two-Michelin-starred modernist restaurant in San Sebastián, according to Fine Dining Lovers, with additional training at institutions including El Celler de Can Roca.
That background helped ALTO earn a spot at #55 on the Los Angeles Times 101 Best Restaurants list in December, with the paper praising its open-fire cooking, regional bread program and torta rogel dessert trolley. The restaurant also landed a recommended listing in the Michelin Guide California last year, which cited shareable rioplatense dishes like chipa cheesy yuca bread and hand-cut braised beef empanadas. Elsewhere, the Los Angeles Times detailed how ALTO's kitchen uses bakery sheeters to transform galleta de campaña, a dense Uruguayan breakfast bread traditionally folded with beef tallow, into delicate appetizers served with roasted garlic herb butter.
Vermouth Over Ice Anchors the Drink List
The bar leans heavily on South American vermouth culture with its Vermucito Experience, priced between $12 and $22, which features Las Flores Blanco from Uruguay alongside La Fuerza Rojo and Sideral from Argentina. La Fuerza's Rojo is made with Malbec. Per LAist, Argentine vermouth is served over ice with soda water, a ritual that traces back to late 19th- and early 20th-century Italian and Spanish immigration to the region, according to New Worlder.
Local dining observers have described ALTO's collection as one of the largest South American wine and aperitif selections in Los Angeles, per Bron Appétit, built around Tannat-based vermouths like Vermut Flores Rosé. The bar's food menu also includes a Tongue & Trout Roe Toast for $17, made with sous-vide beef tongue, brioche, celery-carrot vinaigrette and trout roe.
Why the Casual Pivot Makes Sense on Ventura
Klenzi told LAist that the bar concept reflects a different philosophy than the dinner service upstairs. “Alto will take care of customers it sees every day,” he said, adding that cooking at the bar feels like cooking at home for friends or family. The comfort-food model also lines up with broader industry patterns, since Latin America accounts for 38.5%, or $1.46 billion, of global empanada market revenue, driven largely by Argentina's thousands of neighborhood rotiserías, according to market research from Dataintelo.
ALTO's move also fits into a broader surge of ambitious dining along Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, a corridor that has recently welcomed Sonoran taquería El Ruso's first permanent taquería and the California bistro Vignette earlier this year. Before ALTO's modernist approach arrived, traditional Argentine dining in Los Angeles was long anchored by classic asado steakhouses like Carlitos Gardel, the Melrose Avenue institution opened by Argentine-Armenian immigrants Carlos and Azniv Bozoghlian in the early 1990s, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Hours and What's Next
The bar operates Tuesday through Friday from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., Saturday from 5 to 9:30 p.m., and Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m.; ALTO is closed Mondays. On August 13, the restaurant will host an à la carte collaboration dinner with Clara Corso and Lucas Canga, according to LAist's report.
