At Briciola, a new restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, cachaça flavors vodka sauce and guava paste is served alongside cheese. The Brazilian-Italian restaurant has opened in the former Spoon & Pork space at 3131 West Sunset Boulevard, pairing Italian dishes with Brazilian ingredients and techniques.
Briciola opened in mid-September as a partnership between chef Matteo Di Nicola and Mattia Raimond, according to Eater Los Angeles. Its name means “crumb” in Italian, a reference to the restaurant’s small dining room. The partners say the concept draws on their ties to both Brazil and Italy.
Raimond was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and raised in Northern Italy. His mother is from Rio de Janeiro, and his father ran an Italian restaurant in Brazil. Raimond later worked in French restaurants and studied to become a sommelier. Di Nicola was born in Rome and grew up around his family’s restaurants in Italy before training as a chef and staging in kitchens across the country. He described that training to Edible Ventura County: “I was in chef school in Italy for five years. Every year you have to go to a stage.”
The partnership’s earlier restaurant
Before opening in Silver Lake, Raimond and Di Nicola ran Cedro, an Italian restaurant in Newbury Park. They closed it in late 2025 to move to Los Angeles. Eater Los Angeles reported that Cedro received a Michelin Guide Recommendation and was later awarded Bib Gourmand status. Raimond had long wanted to develop an Italian-Brazilian concept, and the partners told Eater that opening on Sunset was exciting for them.
Rather than center the menu on the churrascaria-style steakhouses common around Los Angeles, Briciola brings Brazilian flavors into Italian dishes. Its offerings range from starters and pasta to seafood and dessert.
Brazilian ingredients across the menu
Eater Los Angeles’s menu report highlights crossovers that range from cavatappi with crunchy linguiça calabresa in a pink sauce made with cachaça instead of vodka to spaghetti alla nerano with zucchini and queijo Minas, a soft cheese from Minas Gerais. The report also describes starters such as polenta frita, a dish Italian immigrants brought to Brazil; bolinho de bacalhau, a fried cod-and-potato fritter with red pepper sauce; and caprese carioca, made with roasted pineapple, sunflower seeds, cherry tomatoes, micro basil, and burrata. A dill-forward Cesarinha comes topped with Parmesan and crunchy plantains.
A longer history of Italian-Brazilian foodways
The migration behind these culinary exchanges stretches back generations. A page from the Prefeitura de São Paulo quotes Italy’s consul general saying that 1.5 million Italians arrived in Brazil from 1870 and worked mainly for coffee producers. One documented culinary example predating Briciola is polenta frita, described above as a dish Italian immigrants brought to Brazil. The historical account provides migration and employment context, but does not identify other dishes or detail how Italian immigration shaped foodways specifically in São Paulo.
The kitchen’s other offerings include prosciutto crudo with papaya and a grilled branzino served in a coconut-and-bell-pepper sauce inspired by moqueca, the Brazilian seafood stew with roots in Salvador, Bahia. Specials rotate and have included carbonara and tuna carpaccio with cantaloupe.
Guava and cheese, with a sweet finish
Desserts continue the ingredient pairings with queijo Minas and goiabada (guava paste), banana Foster finished with salty pecorino, and gelato amarena. Eater Los Angeles reports that the wine list currently leans toward natural bottles from Austria, Germany, and France, while Raimond and Di Nicola are working to add Brazilian wines. The restaurant has also begun attracting regular customers, according to Eater.
Briciola is part of a Brazilian dining scene that extends beyond its established Los Angeles hub. Thrillist describes Culver City’s “Little Brazil” as the city’s oldest Brazilian enclave and reports that more than 10,000 Brazilians live in Los Angeles. Its list of other restaurants includes Nossa, which draws on its owners’ Italian and Brazilian backgrounds, and H&H Brazilian Steakhouse, a modern take on the churrascarias of Rio Grande do Sul. Briciola brings its own variation to that landscape by pairing Brazilian elements with Italian cooking.
