Q. What is it supposed to be on the show?

A. A Mexican bakery (known as a panaderia).

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. Somewhere in Ensenada, Mexico.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 2 (of season 4), "The Gringos".

After the Cohens learn that Ryan has gone down to Ensenada to track down Volchok (and that Seth is with him), Sandy & Kirsten head down to Mexico to keep their boys safe.

When we first see them in Ensenada, they are coming out of a blue & white bakery (panaderia in Spanish), carrying cups of coffee. There is a mural of an Aztec archer on the wall next to the door of the bakery.

They talk about whether they are crazy to go chasing after Ryan & Seth every time they get in trouble, but decide that, for the time being, it's their job. Kirsten volunteers that she took Spanish in high school.

(We don't see the Cohens again in this episode until they show up at Leonardo's.)

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. It is a real Mexican-style bakery, but not in Mexico.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. It is really in Los Angeles, northwest of Exposition Park and the USC campus, not far from most of the other OC "Ensenada" locations.

The bakery is named "Celaya Panaderia Bakery" and is located at 2704 S. Vermont Ave., in Los Angeles.

That is on the east side of Vermont, just south of W 27th Street.

It is just 120 yards north of the Ensenada bar (but on the other side of the street).

Here is a Bird's Eye view aerial photo of the bakery.

And here is a map link.


There are several other "Ensenada" locations in the same general area.

[ Warning: Some neighboring areas have experienced a high crime rate: exercise reasonable caution. ]

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A. This one wasn't easy. I started looking for it long ago, before I knew about the other Vermont addresses. Neither the street number nor the business name was visible, just signs in Spanish (such as "Pan Mexicana") indicating that it was a panaderia. I also knew that it was a bright blue & white, that there was an unusual church steeple visible in the background across the street (my hunch was that it was probably a Catholic church), and that there was a mural of an Aztec archer on the wall next to the front door. My first guess was somewhere in East L.A.

So, since the mural looked distinctive, I went looking for it first. I checked sites that list East L.A. murals (and even emailed the image to a couple of webmasters of those mural sites), but turned up nothing. So I put it on the back burner for a while.

But once I found that the other "Ensenada" locations were clustered in the area north of USC, I had a hunch that the bakery might be there as well. So I used a function of Live Local that allows you to search for businesses on the portion of the map you are viewing.  I zoomed into the map of the general area where the other "Ensenada" locations were located, then searched for "bakery". That pulled up several bakeries, but only one on Vermont - called (appropriately enough) Celaya Panaderia Bakery. Aerial photos of the building were a bit on the small side, but I was still 90% sure it was the same place. Sp I checked to make sure that unusual church steeple was there. Sure enough, a closer look revealed the steeple to be just across the street: it was St. Agnes Catholic Church, at 2625 South Vermont Ave.

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