Toca Madera Bets Big On Los Angeles With New West Hollywood Location

Toca Madera, the high-powered Mexican steakhouse that debuted in Los Angeles in 2015 and has expanded to Scottsdale, Las Vegas and Houston, will be moving to a new and much larger West Hollywood location.

The sprawling 9,200-square-foot space at 8151 Melrose Ave. will give Toca Madera and its creators, Noble 33 co-founders Tosh Berman and Mikey Tanha, the opportunity to upgrade every element of its experience.

“The menu is going to be more robust,” Berman, chairman of Noble 33, says during an exclusive interview. “The theatrics are going to be more robust. Every time we open a new restaurant, it’s an opportunity to find ways to continue to push the boundaries. We’re going to do it even bigger – the tableside theatrics, the experiential theatrics, the design itself. We’re building a building from the ground-up. … I say this with a ton of humility, but I don’t think there’s a single restaurant in the L.A. market that even comes close to what we’re about to create.”

Noble 33 (which is also working to open a Miami outpost of Toca Madera in 2025) will start construction on its new West Hollywood flagship in early 2025 with the goal of opening within a year. The original Toca Madera on West Third Street in West Hollywood will close on February 24.

The new Melrose Avenue location will include a lush main dining area (adorned with natural elements alongside handcrafted custom woodwork and velvet upholstery) with a double-height wine room. An open kitchen and retractable roof awnings will enhance the feeling of spaciousness. A wood tunnel will lead to a lounge (which will also have its own entrance on Melrose) with DJ sets, fire performers and fireplaces.

“The ceiling heights and the indoor-outdoor components and the PDR sizes and the kitchen sizes and the lounge and the ability to have these different spaces that you can move through and the fluidity of it, it’s going to be something that’s incredibly unique,” Berman says. “When you can start with a blank canvas and build the building and do all the things that you otherwise couldn’t do when you’re retrofitting a concept into an existing space, it’s a game-changer.”

Corporate executive chef Martin Heierling, who joined Noble 33 earlier this year, will expand on a menu that includes crowd-pleasers like sashimi Mexicano, A5-wagyu-topped crispy wonton tacos and a selection of top-tier Australian and Japanese steaks. It will be quite an upgrade from how the original Toca Madera began.

“It started really as a bar with a food component,” Berman says. “As much as it’s been a passion play for us, it has not been able to fully disseminate the true experience of Toca Madera that we have in our newer restaurants that are 10,000 to 17,000 square feet.”

So even at a moment when many prominent restaurants have closed in L.A. (with 2024 casualties including Bicyclette, Son of a Gun, Tesse, All Day Baby, Otium, The Rose, Maude, Alimento, Beauty & Essex and Eveleigh), Noble 33 is ready to make a big bet on the future of dining in West Hollywood. Berman and Tanha also run Casa Madera at the Mondrian hotel and have plans to open Villa Noble, a 35,000-square-foot members club with an outpost of their Meduza Mediterrania restaurant, on Santa Monica Boulevard.

“L.A., first and foremost, is a very big city,” Tanha, CEO of Noble 33, says. “Just because a handful of restaurants are closing doesn’t mean all operators are going to shut down. There are very successful operators in the market. And we’re not in the business of being a trendy restaurant. We’re in the business of creating institutional restaurants that are focused on the quality of food, the service and the long-term sustainability of our product and the long-term commitment by our consumer. We believe in the L.A. market. We also feel that it'll have a little bit of a comeback in the next several years. And we have a great client base.”

“L.A. is one of the greatest cities on the planet,” Berman says. “It only takes leaving for a couple days and coming back and driving down Sunset with the windows down, listening to music, to really understand and feel that L.A. is a vibe. L.A.’s not going anywhere and it’s going to come back with a vengeance. We're betting on it and we're betting on it big. This will be the best Toca that we’ve ever done. I hope that we just start the new wave of development that ends up becoming the new expectation of how restaurant hospitality in L.A. ends up being.”