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Para todo mal, mezcal

Para todo bien, también

(For everything bad, mezcal — for everything good, too.)

Centrally located inside the historic Santora Building in Downtown Santa Ana's Artist Village, Lola Gaspar is a cocktail bar and restaurant proudly serving DTSA since 2008. With a focus on Mexico's vast culinary history, our bar features freshly made mezcal and tequila cocktails to suit everyone's personal taste.

The story of

Lola Gaspar

There's a corner in Downtown Santa Ana where the light falls a little differently. It spills through arched windows of a 1928 Spanish Colonial building, catches on hand-pressed masa, and lingers over a bar where strangers become regulars and regulars become family.

This is Lola's house. And she's been waiting for you.

The Story of Lola Gaspar

She was born of a wandering heart.

In 2006, a sabbatical in Barcelona planted the first seed — late nights of small plates and sangria, the murmur of a city that knew how to gather people around a table. By December of 2008, that seed had bloomed inside the historic Santora Building, where Hollywood's golden age once dined at Daninger's Tea Room — Lucille Ball, George Burns, Gracie Allen all signed the guestbook upstairs. The walls remember.

Then in 2019, a journey to Mexico City changed everything. Chef Luis Perez came home with his hands full of memories — of grandmother's tortillas pressed by hand, of salsas built from scratch, of Sonoran flour catching fire on a comal. Lola listened. Lola transformed.

She is a love letter, written in three languages.

Spanish soul. Mexican heart. California sunlight. Lola Gaspar is where Mexico City's street corners shake hands with Barcelona's tapas bars, where a habanero salsa can make you laugh, cry, and order another round all at once.

Begin with a trompo taco — prime sirloin spinning slowly over mesquite, dressed in radish and salsa de árbol. Finish with churros and horchata ice cream, dipped in chocolate Abuelita sauce. Sip a mezcal cocktail and feel the room tilt, just slightly, toward joy.

She is held inside a building with a secret name.

Santora. Say it slowly. It sounds like an old conquistador, a folk saint, a whispered legend. But the truth is sweeter: it's simply Santa Ana and Orange squeezed together — two places leaning into each other until they became one word. Lola lives inside that embrace.

The building has survived the Great Depression, the 1933 earthquake (when it served as City Hall), decades of decline, and a glorious rebirth as the beating heart of the Artists Village. Lola is its lantern now — lit every Tuesday through Saturday, glowing past midnight on weekends, calling artists and lovers and weary souls in from the street.

She has been recognized — but never changed.

The MICHELIN Guide came knocking with a Bib Gourmand. The accolades arrived. But Lola? She just kept pressing masa, pouring mezcal, lighting candles on her patio, and welcoming you in like she's known you for years.

Because that's what Lola does. She remembers.

Come find her.

No reservations. No pretense. Just a warm room inside a hundred-year-old building, where a chef who traveled the world came home to cook for his neighbors — and where every guest, on every visit, is treated like the most important person in Orange County tonight.

Lola Gaspar · 211 W. 2nd St., Santa Ana · in the historic Santora Building · since 2008