Why Bacari GDL matters.
Bacari GDL is a convivial small-plates restaurant where Downtown Glendale's metropolitan character meets Venetian tavern culture, Israeli culinary influences and wood-fired cooking shaped by a family-run Los Angeles restaurant group.
Set within The Americana at Brand near Brand Boulevard and Colorado Street and just steps from Glendale Galleria, the restaurant occupies the southern end of Downtown Glendale between the commercial spine of Brand Boulevard, the civic core surrounding Broadway and the residential neighborhoods rising north toward the Verdugo Mountains, with the open-air streets of The Americana creating a pedestrian enclave within the larger downtown grid. A long communal table and intimate lounge establish a shared dining format before the patio opens directly toward the development's pedestrian streets. Small plates form the primary encounter, arriving across the table in sequences designed around several dishes. Wine, cocktails and the restaurant's 90-minute open-bar format extend the Venetian bacari premise into a contemporary drinking program. The result is a social dining room where communal seating, shared plates and fire-driven cooking translate the scale and conviviality of a Venetian tavern into Downtown Glendale.
What defines Bacari GDL.
Bacari GDL is best known for bringing brothers Robert and Danny Kronfli and chef-partner Lior Hillel's Venetian-inspired restaurant concept to The Americana at Brand on February 15, 2017. Robert Kronfli's restaurant career grew from Paladar, an underground supper club he created with fellow USC sophomore Alex Chang in their North University Park apartment in 2009, where three-course dinners developed from informal Thursday gatherings into a reservation-driven operation during the following two years. The project became the subject of the documentary Paladar, screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles in 2013, before Robert joined Danny and Hillel in a restaurant portfolio that included Bacaro LA, Nature's Brew and Bacari PDR. Glendale became the group's third Bacari concept after the original near USC and the Playa Del Rey expansion, extending the family-owned business north through Los Angeles County. A ten-foot wood-fired oven distinguished the new kitchen, giving Hillel and Executive Sous Chef Kevin Corona equipment capable of charring vegetables, melting cheeses across pasta and firing pizzas at the center of the Glendale repertoire. Hillel's Israeli heritage supplied another foundation for the menu, joining Mediterranean flavors with the cicchetti tradition that gave the Bacari concept its name.
Mujadara builds one of the clearest Levantine expressions around lentils and basmati rice, grounding the grain in caramelized alliums and the earthy depth of legumes. Lamb hummus pushes the same regional style toward ground lamb against puréed chickpeas, and green falafel carries herbs and legumes into a crisp fried preparation. Shawarma tacos move seasoned meat into a handheld format associated with Southern California, collapsing two street-food traditions into a single small plate. Brussels sprouts use pomegranate molasses, crème fraîche and fresh pomegranate to balance caramelized bitterness with acidity, dairy richness and concentrated fruit sweetness. Glazed pork belly works through a sweet umami coating sharpened by lemon and finished with sesame, scallion and cilantro, creating a fatty, caramelized counterpoint to the vegetable and grain preparations. The wood-fired branch reaches smoked mushroom and Margherita pizzas, preserving the oven as the connective element between Bacari's Italian reference point and the Mediterranean flavors that distinguish the Glendale kitchen.
How Bacari GDL fits.
Bacari GDL works as the anchor for an outing connecting Southern California's neon heritage with a surviving Golden Age movie palace and the extraordinary former estate of the civic figure who helped propel Glendale's early growth.
Begin at Museum of Neon Art, an institution devoted to electric and kinetic art whose collection preserves signs, illuminated sculpture and technologies that transformed the nighttime streetscape of twentieth-century Los Angeles. Its Glendale home places historic commercial signage alongside contemporary neon art, allowing craftsmanship once associated with theaters, restaurants and roadside businesses to function as a distinct artistic medium. The museum also maintains a collection extending beyond neon into electric and kinetic work, broadening the subject from advertising to the wider artistic possibilities of light and motion. Continue to Alex Theatre, opened in September 1925 and distinguished by a design combining Egyptian and Art Deco elements with the soaring marquee tower that became its most recognizable exterior feature. Arthur G. Lindley and Charles Selkirk designed the movie palace, which spent more than six decades screening films before closing in September 1991 after Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The Glendale Redevelopment Agency acquired it the following year and undertook a $6.5 million rehabilitation, reopening the building as a performing arts center on New Year's Eve 1993. National Register designation followed in 1996, and 70mm projection returned the building to first-run filmmaking in 2026. Conclude at Brand Library & Art Center, occupying Leslie Coombs Brand's 1904 Miradero estate at the base of the Verdugo Mountains. Brand modeled its Indo-Islamic exterior on the East India Pavilion he had encountered at Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, producing towers, minarets and scalloped arches that earned the mansion its “Brand's Castle” nickname. His later years brought an airstrip, hangar and private airplanes to the grounds, including celebrated fly-in parties whose attendees arrived by aircraft. Brand left the estate and surrounding acreage to Glendale for a park and library, and the mansion entered its new role in 1956 before a 1969 gallery and recital-hall addition expanded it into a major arts center. The progression moves from the electrical craft that transformed Southern California's commercial streets through a 1925 movie palace rescued for a second cultural life and culminates inside an aviation-minded civic pioneer's architectural fantasy converted into a permanent center for art and music.
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