Why XUNTOS matters.
XUNTOS is a convivial Spanish tapas bar where Downtown Santa Monica's coastal urbanity meets chef Sandra Cordero's Galician heritage, Northern Spanish pintxos culture and a cellar devoted deeply to Spanish natural wine.
Set along Santa Monica Boulevard between Fifth and Sixth streets and just steps from Santa Monica Public Library, the tapas bar occupies the eastern side of Downtown between the Third Street Promenade, the Civic Center and Palisades Park, with the commercial grid descending west toward the Pacific. Two storefronts within a 1926 building divide into separate bar and dining rooms beneath a pair of mezzanines, giving the narrow historic structure several distinct elevations for drinking and dining. A bodega-style bar establishes the principal encounter through pintxos, sherry, vermouth and an extensive Spanish bottle collection. Charcoal cooking, market vegetables and seafood extend the room toward the regional cooking of Galicia, Asturias, Catalunya and the Basque Country. The result is a layered Spanish restaurant where architecture, wine and small-format cooking translate Cordero's Iberian background into the dense commercial fabric of Downtown Santa Monica.
What defines XUNTOS.
XUNTOS is best known for chef-owner Sandra Cordero's transformation of her Spanish upbringing into a Northern Spanish tapas bar centered on pintxos, natural wine and regional cooking. Cordero was born in Madrid to a Galician mother and grew up between Spain and Southern California before establishing Gasolina Cafe in Woodland Hills in 2015, where her cooking first developed a substantial Los Angeles following. XUNTOS followed on July 14, 2023, taking over the former Heroic Italian premises and giving Cordero a dedicated Westside platform for the food and drinking culture of Northern Spain. Its name means “together” in Galician, directly connecting the restaurant with the language of her maternal heritage and the communal structure of a meal assembled from shared small plates. Interior designer Heather Swallow and graphic designer Cecile Michaelis drew from the building's 1920s origins through Art Deco wallpaper, chandeliers resembling flapper dresses and artwork depicting women of the period. A wall carrying 3,000 scallop shells connects that decorative program with Galicia and the scallop emblem associated with the Camino de Santiago. Beverage director Scott Baker, formerly wine director at Somni, developed the Spanish-focused drinking program around natural wines, sherries, vermouths, cider and beer. The cellar has since grown beyond 200 Spanish bottles with more than 30 wines poured by the glass, making wine structurally inseparable from the restaurant's pintxos-bar conception.
Hand-cut jamón Ibérico establishes the repertoire through the concentrated fat and cured depth of Spain's defining ham, placing a product requiring minimal intervention beside dishes built through frying, grilling and saucing. Croquetas de jamón encase cured ham within a creamy interior beneath a fried shell, and pan con tomate reduces another Spanish staple to bread, ripe tomato and olive oil. Scallops arrive in their shells with saffron butter, bringing Galicia's relationship with Atlantic seafood into a preparation where shellfish sweetness meets the floral bitterness and richness of the sauce. Squid-ink fideos combine short noodles with calamari and the marine concentration of cephalopod ink, moving the seafood program from individual shellfish toward a composed dish. Fried eggplant ribbons introduce quince as a sweet counterweight, and whole anchovies use frying to crisp a fish deeply associated with Spanish bar eating. Charcoal provides another branch through meats, seafood and farmers-market vegetables, tying California produce to the direct-fire techniques running through Cordero's Northern Spanish cooking. Pintxos complete the structure as small individual bites designed to sit naturally beside vermouth, sherry and Spanish wine, preserving the drinking-and-eating relationship that gave XUNTOS its original form.
How XUNTOS fits.
XUNTOS works as the anchor for an outing connecting a nineteenth-century optical attraction with a women-built institution of civic culture and a museum assembled from the city's centennial effort to preserve its own past.
Begin at Camera Obscura, whose optical apparatus entered Santa Monica in 1898 under Mayor Robert F. Jones, nephew of city founder John Percival Jones. Jones initially operated the device on the beach for ten cents per viewing before it became part of the North Beach Bathhouse and later moved into Palisades Park after municipal acquisition in 1910. A revolving metal turret directs exterior light through a view and mirror onto a viewing disk inside a darkened room, preserving a technology whose principles predate photography by centuries. Architect Weldon J. Fulton incorporated the apparatus into the purpose-built Senior Recreation Center in 1955, where its distinctive diagonal script signage survives above the entrance. Continue to Santa Monica Bay Woman's Club Building, created for an organization that began in 1904 when suffragist Elmira T. Stephens formed a women's study group devoted to culture, education and civic affairs. The group became the Santa Monica Woman's Club the following year and later joined an Ocean Park organization to form the Santa Monica Bay Woman's Club. Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker contributed toward the clubhouse, and architect Henry C. Hollwedel designed the Classical Revival building completed in 1914 with arched upper windows, stained glass, oak doors and marble surrounding its entrance. Members subsequently organized Red Cross classes during World War I, served meals during the Depression and funded scholarships and other charitable work. Conclude at Santa Monica History Museum, whose origin followed the city's 1975 centennial celebration and a local-history exhibition assembled at the Civic Auditorium. Ann Funk chaired the Historical Activities Committee, and a founding meeting on October 8 created the Santa Monica Historical Society with former mayor Clo Hoover as its first president. Bob and Louise Gabriel drove the later effort to establish a museum, which opened in 1988 before reaching its permanent home beside the Main Library in 2009. Its holdings now include more than 600,000 rare photographs alongside objects and memorabilia donated by pioneer families and later collectors. The progression moves from a Victorian optical device built around the physical act of seeing through an institution created by women pursuing education and public service and culminates inside a collection where Santa Monica has preserved more than a century of its own visual and material history.
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