Detroit’s Brush Park neighborhood got a new restaurant this week.
The Spanish-inspired Leña hosted its grand opening on Wednesday, offering a fusion of Catalonian and Basque traditions alongside an essence of Motor City.
The restaurant’s team is made up of all Detroit food and beverage veterans, with Tarun Kajeepeta and Matt Tulpa at the helm, a partnership first forged at speakeasy-style cocktail bar Shelby in the city’s Financial District downtown.
Located in Bedrock’s City Modern building at 2720 Brush St., Leña brings something new to Detroit, drawing inspiration from the team’s travels to create a space that feels like home for all who enter.
“One of the great things about what I realized from my travels to Spain is that hospitality is what it’s really about,” Mindy Lopus, director of operations at Leña, says. “It’s about creating a family, whether it’s a family of staff or a family of your community. So, we wanted to really just give it this celebratory feel and I think we’ve gotten pretty successful at doing that.”
Leña’s team also includes executive chef Mike Conrad, who has held positions at short-lived Core City restaurant Magnet and Corktown’s Takoi, as well as pastry chef Lena Sareini and general manager Gabe DeFlaviis, who both formerly worked at Selden Standard.
“Our team is all Detroit food and beverage professionals, so I think that everyone’s bringing their experiences from working at different great restaurants in Detroit,” Kajeepta says. “Collectively, we are trying to bring a lot of the elements of what we've learned through other experiences in Detroit to Leña. The cuisine and the concept is different, but with the style of hospitality, we really want it to feel Detroit, and that to me means unassuming, really dialed in on the details, but not pretentious.”
Kajeepta feels that a “fancy-tasting-menu type restaurant” was not what the city needed, and that Spanish-style dining lends itself to a more casual, neighborhood vibe where customers can choose to have just a snack or a full meal. And Leña is a versatile space fit for any vibe, whether you want to sit alone and work with your laptop open and a glass of wine, or visit for a fancy dinner with family on a special occasion.
The food options at the restaurant include “pintxos,” which are Basque bar bites, as well as wood-fired meat entrees, Spanish-infused desserts, and more. A curated Spanish wine and cocktail menu will also be available.
However, while great food is essential to any well-rounded space, the restaurant’s main focus is on the overall experience.
“We want you to feel at home. We want you to feel really comfortable,” Kajeepta says. “It’s a tuned-in experience; we definitely have the details down. It’s not casual by any means, but it’s comfortable.”
Uniquely, the restaurant is surrounded by windows, so customers can see the neighborhood while dining. Plus, the “open-air” kitchen is situated at the center of the space, allowing diners to witness how their food is made from any seat.
“We are not a chef-driven restaurant, we are a hospitality-driven restaurant, where we really are focusing on the experience, not just of our guests in the community, but also on our team,” Lopus says. “Of all of the restaurants that I’ve put together in the past, I would say by far this has been the greatest group of people that I’ve ever seen in one place, all with the same common goal and that’s creating a really spectacular experience for the community.”
Following a successful small-scale soft opening during the NFL Draft and a grand opening on May 8, Leña hopes to continue to introduce the new space to neighbors and visitors.
For now, the team is honing in on hopes to enhance the community “by providing a unique and fun experience.” In the longer term, the restaurant hopes to create a summer event series to help bring the local community together even further.
“We’re really excited about the vibrancy in the neighborhood,” Kajeepta says. “We just want to be a staple in the Brush Park community… and really make it a corner where everyone in the neighborhood meets up with each other and feels really at home and welcome.”
More information is available at lenadetroit.com or on Instagram @lenadetroit.
Scroll down for photos of some of the food options at Leña.
