The New Conga Room
Neighborhood: Downtown L.A.
800 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, Ca 90015
Tel. 213-749-0445
http://www.congaroom.com/

Bar, Club Type: Rock Club, Latin Club, DJ, Dance Club, Dinner and Dancing

Brad Gluckstein who describes himself as an “inherently Jewish” guy “with a corazón Latino” has opened the new Conga Room where long-time patrons might be astonished by the expanded musical bill-of-fare. The offerings naturally will include voluminous amounts of salsa and merengue, the club’s signature sound. But there also will be a tapas bar’s worth of World Beat, tropical, rock en Español, jazz, mariachi, Brazilian and alternative Latin sounds, all under the guidance of the Conga Room’s newly appointed musical director Oscar Hernandez, leader of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra and collaborator with the likes of Paul Simon and Ruben Blades.

Hernandez will direct the club’s house band, hand-picked, crack musicians who Hernandez vows will be not only danceable but as listenable as any concert-hall ensemble. “My vision is to basically create the perception that this is an elite team, this is an elite ensemble of musicians.”

Hernandez, who moved to Los Angeles from New York two years ago, said he’s grateful to have the chance to bring to Los Angeles audiences “some hard-core, real-deal salsa.” One key challenge for the club’s owners, he believes, will be to create a congenial space that’s equally accommodating to the hoi polloi burning up the dance floor and the velvet-rope crowd stashed away in Barcelona chairs sipping cocktails in the VIP lounge.

Chef Alex García, a pioneer of Nueva Latina cuisine, promises to replicate the classics — arroz con pollo, churrasco grilled meat, green plantain fritters — while also inventing new dishes infused with culinary tips he absorbed from his Cuban grandmother. “We’re trying to do a menu where everybody’s going to feel included,” he said. “It’s really a nostalgia corner for every Latin American person around.”

From its perch on a noisy, light-swept public plaza where on any given night there could be thousands of Lakers, Clippers or Kings fans plus mobs of concert-goers and tourists milling around, the Conga Room also must strive to maintain an atmosphere that’s both intimately human-scale and cosmopolitan. “It’s a deliberate balance to really keep it elegant and sophisticated in a setting that would want you to be more like a sports bar,” Gluckstein said.

This sounds to me to be a hard bill to fill, if they can squeeze elegance and sophistication from a mainly sports fans audience, then they have amazing magical powers. K.M.