Amiga Amore in Highland Park, a cozy restaurant with an expansive patio, truly started out as a labor of love for Danielle Duran-Zecca and her husband Alessandro Zecca.
“MexItalian food, which is what we call what we do, really started out as our friendship that turned into love,” Danielle says. “When we met, my husband wasn’t the biggest Mexican food fan, so I had to figure out how to get him to enjoy the food that I loved so much growing up.”
The duo met in New York and launched Amiga Amore as a Los Angeles pop-up in 2019 before opening the brick-and-mortar in 2023. And the restaurant has already received a warm welcome. Time Out gave it four stars writing that “every item on the menu is a delightful, slightly heady mix of both cuisines.” Plus, Danielle and Alessandro were Emerging Chef semifinalists at the James Beard Awards last year, and Danielle is a Best Chef: California semifinalist this year.
“The restaurant itself is my little casita; it’s my house as if you were eating at your grandma’s table,” she says. “And the food is more elevated than what she might put on your plate.”
Read on for four can’t miss dishes at Amiga Amore in Highland Park, and book your spot on OpenTable to try them.
Amiga Amore’s sleeper hit
“I grew up eating chile rellenos every Sunday at my grandma’s house, but we take it to a newer level,” Danielle says. Danielle’s chile relleno manicotti sees housemade pasta stuffed with all of the traditional chile relleno fillings, including Oaxacan and Requesón cheeses along with fire-roasted chiles, and topped with slow-cooked tomato jam and tomato water. “This is the sleeper hit of the menu,” Danielle says.
Mexican street food meets silky noodles
This elote agnolotti “was one of the first pastas we created,” Danielle says. It combines the flavors of Mexican street-food corn with silky housemade noodles, finger limes, and cotija cheese. It’s finished with a housemade take on Tajín. “I grew up putting Tajín on everything, so it was really important to create our own spice blend,” Danielle says.
Nopales steals the show in this classic salad
The couple’s MexItalian spin on a traditional caprese salad pairs nopales, cherry tomatoes, gooseberries, and hibiscus salt with housemade stracciatella cheese. “It was the first salad we created,” Danielle says. “We serve it with our housemade chile de arbol bread, which also gives it a little heat.”
Alessandro’s favorite dessert goes Mexican
“Panna cotta is my husband’s favorite dessert, so after a bunch of trial and error with combining it with Mexican flavors, we landed on a horchata,” Danielle says. The silky (and also vegan and gluten-free) dessert is topped with a crispy rice puff, almonds, and seasonal fruit.
Karen Palmer is a pizza- and pasta-obsessed food writer based in Los Angeles. She is the former editorial director of Tasting Table, and her work has appeared in Eater, Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, and many other publications. Follow her on Instagram at @karenlpalmer.
