Pawn Shop Turns an L.A. Landmark Into a Sports Bar

By Mei Chen
11:50 a.m. PT, July 2, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.

Tony Messina won a James Beard Award cooking at Uni in Boston, where the point was pristine fish, Japanese technique, and the kind of seafood that tends to arrive with tweezers nearby.

His next big act in Los Angeles involves 53 screens, a 50-seat bar, seven private suites, and hot dogs with caviar.

The Pawn Shop Restaurant Los Angeles Tony Messina

That’s Pawn Shop, the new Hollywood sports bar and restaurant inside the former Brothers Collateral pawn shop at Melrose and Cahuenga. The building dates to the 1930s, and the name comes honestly: for more than 40 years, the address was an actual pawn shop. Then developer Diego Torres-Palma and Ventana Ventures turned it into a 7,808-square-foot sports bar built for a city entering a very loud sports stretch.

Los Angeles is hosting the World Cup this year, the Super Bowl next year, and the Olympics in 2028. Pawn Shop seems designed for the whole run, with two video walls, a massive bar, mezzanine-level suites, and an investor group that includes Mark Cuban, Dodgers executive Andrew Friedman, Angel City FC captain Ali Riley, former NBA player Chandler Parsons, and television producer Michael Davies.

The Pawn Shop Restaurant Los Angeles Chef Tony Messina Pupu platter

Messina built his name in Boston, first through serious restaurant kitchens and eventually at Uni, where he became chef and partner and won the 2019 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast. Uni is the kind of place where raw fish, luxury ingredients, and precise technique carried the night. Pawn Shop gives him the opposite assignment: cook for a room where somebody may be watching soccer, a Dodgers game, and three different betting lines at the same time.

The Pawn Shop Restaurant Los Angeles Chef Tony Messina Steak

Messina’s menu folds Boston into Los Angeles sports-bar logic: a Polynesian-New England pu pu platter, pickle-brined fried chicken, shellfish towers, hanger steak frites, beef tallow fries, branzino, and the already ridiculous, probably inevitable caviar hot dog. Messina has said: “It’s bar food done really well.”

The Pawn Shop Restaurant Los Angeles Chef Tony Messina

Pawn Shop puts a real chef in charge of food that usually gets treated as an afterthought to whatever game is on the screens. There are easier ways to open a sports bar in Los Angeles. Pawn Shop chose the harder route: restore the old building, make the bar feel like an arena, and put a James Beard chef in charge of the snacks.