La Onda festival loses major act as Grupo Firme is denied entry to U.S.
The group was slated to headline the closing night of the two-day celebration on Sunday, June 1, at the Napa Valley Expo, but announced the cancellation just days from their festival debut.
'Currently, visas for Grupo Firme ... are undergoing an administrative process at the US Embassy,' the band wrote on Instagram on Friday, May 30. '(It's) a situation that makes it impossible for Grupo Firme to perform at La Onda Fest as planned.'
Festival organizers confirmed the cancellation and announced that rising corrido star Tito Double P will take Grupo Firme's place on the Verizon Stage on Sunday.
Now in its second year, La Onda has quickly become a major celebration of Latin music and culture in Northern California, with more than 60,000 attendees at its debut in 2024. This year's event, which begins Saturday, May 31, boasts major acts such as Marco Antonio Solís, Banda MS, Pepe Aguilar, Ángela Aguilar and Alicia Villarreal.
'There was something missing in the Northern California festival scene — an authentic, large-scale festival dedicated 100% to Latino culture,' said organizer Dave Graham, whose team is also behind the annual BottleRock Napa Valley festival hosted over Memorial Day weekend.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
14 hours ago
- USA Today
Wahlburgers closes 79 locations nationwide in 2025 shake-up
Wahlburgers has closed nearly 80 locations this year, dipping to 34 restaurants nationwide. The burger chain founded by actor Mark Wahlberg and his brothers, Donnie and Paul, simultaneously closed 79 locations earlier this year that were in Hy-Vee grocery stores, Eat This, Not That reported earlier this month, ending an agreement that started in 2017. Wahlburgers CEO Randy Sharpe told Nation's Restaurant News that the closures affected food court kiosks at the Iowa-based chain. "It's not a full-service restaurant, and it wasn't a significant revenue driver for either side,' Sharpe told the publication. Here's what to know. Where are Hy-Vee stores located? Hy-Vee operates 302 stores in Iowa and seven states near it, according to the web scraping tool ScrapeHero. Iowa has the most in the U.S. with 151 locations. Other locations include the rest of the Midwest and the Southern region of the country, too. Mark Wahlberg owns Chevrolet, Buick and GMC auto dealerships Wahlburgers isn't Mark Wahlberg's only business interest. The former rapper known in the 1990s for Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch also owns several auto dealerships in the Buckeye State. Mark Wahlberg has Chevrolet dealerships in various parts of Ohio, including Columbus, Worthington and Avon, as well as a Buick GMC dealership in Columbus. The dealership websites prominently feature a photo of the Hollywood actor. But wait, there's more Wahlberg launched a Mexican-inspired restaurant, Flecha Cantina, in bustling Las Vegas late last year. He's also a co-owner and brand ambassador for Flecha Azul Tequila, which he partnered with in 2022. Wahlberg made his mark in the fashion industry as well, becoming a co-founder and owner of Municipal clothing. The lifestyle brand blends athleisure apparel with streetwear flair and launched in 2020.
Eater
17 hours ago
- Eater
Group Behind LA Hit Mother Wolf Is Opening an NYC Restaurant
is a born-and-raised New Yorker who is an editor for Eater's Northeast region and Eater New York, was the former Eater Austin editor for 10 years, and often writes about food and pop culture. The Los Angeles hospitality group behind chef Evan Funke's hit Italian spot, Mother Wolf, is going to be opening a new restaurant in New York City. Ten Five signed a 15-year lease on the ground floor of 125 West 57th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues. It's a mixed-use development in the heart of Midtown's so-called Billionaires' Row, where the restaurant will take up 7,045 square feet on the ground floor, as first reported by the New York Post. Ten Five's managing partner, Dan Daley, said via a rep for the building's developers, 'We're excited to bring a new concept to this incredibly dynamic part of the city and to contribute to the continued evolution of this iconic corridor,' he wrote, describing it as 'a considered and ambitious project.' Ten Five's chief marketing officer, Kim Walker, writes to Eater that there are 'no further details to share,' but that the team is 'excited about the new space.' Eater has reached out to Funke to see if he is involved. Ten Five's first Los Angeles restaurants were coastal Mexican restaurant Ka'teen and rooftop bar Desert 5 Spot in 2021, inside the Tommie Hotel. Those were followed by Bar Lis in 2022, and French restaurant Mes Amis followed in 2022, both in the Thomson Hotel. But it wasn't until Ten Five debuted Mother Wolf in 2022, where Funke focuses on Roman-style Italian cuisine and especially his pastas, that they had a spot that received outsized culinary attention and celebrity patronage. At the time, Los Angeles Times critic Bill Addison described the spaghettone alla gricia as a 'pork-besotted masterpiece,' and was taken with 'all'amatriciana's potent mix of tomato and guanciale fused onto curving rigatoni.' Building on Mother Wolf's success, the group expanded with offshoots in Miami and Las Vegas. A rendering of 125 West 57th's entrance. Rendering: Neoscape Not all of their ventures have worked out. The company opened an LA-style British pub, the Chap, but closed it a year later, in 2023, in the middle of the company's lawsuit with then-partnering development company Relevant Group. This new, unnamed NYC restaurant isn't Ten Five's first venture into the five boroughs. Back in 2024, the group expanded Desert 5 Spot, a western-themed bar with bull riding, into Williamsburg. 125 West 57th is going to be a high-priced, fancy 30-story building run by real estate developers Alchemy-ABR Investment Partners and Cain International. The address had been home to the Calvary Baptist Church, dating back to the late 1800s, dubbed a 'skyscraper church.' As part of this new development, the church will reopen, occupying the second through 10th floors. The overall space is scheduled to open after Labor Day in September, per the Post. It's down the street from another big Midtown restaurant in the works. Over at 9 West 57th Street, Billy Durney and the team behind Kent Hospitality Group are working on their spot.
Eater
18 hours ago
- Eater
Why Alinea Is One of the U.S.'s Most Influential Restaurants
Maximalism and gastronomic creativity rule the day at Alinea, arguably one of the most famous (and most relentlessly blogged about) restaurants in the United States. Chef Grant Achatz, along with then-partner Nick Kokonas, opened the restaurant in May of 2005 in Chicago's Lincoln Park, and immediately intrigued an American food public weary of the routine fine dining choices. Since its opening night, meals at Alinea promised more than two dozen courses that featured wisps of smoke, bites hanging from tightropes, and all manner of flavors (milkweed pods! Dandelion roots and tobacco and lavender!) deconstructed, gelled, foamed, frozen, candied, microplaned, and all painstakingly grafted back together in wholly unexpected ways. Achatz was immediately vaulted into the echelon of the country's most influential chefs; later dishes like the apple taffy floating balloon and painted-table dessert became iconic. In addition to accolades — a 2007 James Beard Award for Achatz for Best Chef: Great Lakes, a 2016 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant, numerous appearances on the World's 50 Best List, 3 Michelin stars — its mark is also felt in countless imitators who embraced the scientific, slightly gonzo approach to dining as an experience. The Alinea Group would expand to seven other concepts — including Next, which rotates its culinary focus every few months, and cocktail bar the Aviary. And many folks who spent time in the Alinea Group have gone on to make their own independent mark on the culinary world: Curtis Duffy, Dave Beran, John Shields, Alex Stupak, Jenner Tomaska, Jeff Pikus. In 2014, Ruth Reichl wrote: 'What makes Alinea such a fabulous experience is the sheer exuberant fun of the place. This is food as performance, food as surprise, food as you've never seen it before.' The restaurant still holds three Michelin stars. Today, Achatz reflects on 20 years at Alinea and considers what lies ahead. I had worked at the French Laundry and El Bulli, and felt there was a gap in fine dining, because prior to 2005, it was mostly [defined as] French cuisine: There were a few French culinarians in the U.S., like Daniel Boulud, but primarily it was showing up in Western Europe. In 2005, we're right at the peak of El Bulli, the Fat Duck — molecular kind of gastronomy. So we felt like it was an opportunity. With us and wd~50, it just migrated over the pond. In Chicago, the whole gastronomy scene was on a reset. Here, you had Schwa, which was basically a garage band doing highly, highly creative, well-executed food. You had a lot of older French restaurants, like Everest. You had Rick Bayless's places that had been around for a long time and were niche and Mexican-focused, and then you had Paul Kahan with Blackbird. An early but undated photo of the Alinea team shows, from left to right: John Shields (now chef-owner of Chicago's Smyth and the Loyalist), Achatz, and Curtis Duffy (now chef-owner of Chicago's Ever). Alinea It was ripe. Chicago was ready. Chicago was a town that embraces innovation and artistry with its history of architecture, music, and medicine. Our opening was really anticipated at that time, because I was blogging prior to the opening on eGullet, back when those forums were popular. That was the moment of the internet foodies. And so the anticipation was really high. We had a lot of attention right off the bat: We had Frank Bruni, then the restaurant critic at the New York Times, in the restaurant on opening night. Having a critic out of New York City at the time was unheard of, certainly on opening night. Achatz calls 'Hot Potato, Cold Potato' one of his favorite dishes served opening night: 'I felt it really embodied the spirit and the ethos of the restaurant at that time.' An elegant culinary game between hot and cold temperatures, it featured a hot ball of potato suspended over a creamy, chilled potato soup; the diner would sip all in one go and experience the same flavor in two temperatures at the same time. Alinea A brand-new 2025 dish called 'Fossil' invites guests to use an archeology toolkit to brush away 'debris' and uncover the food underneath. 'It's inspired by South American archeological finds, and my and the executive chefs' fascination with archeology,' Achatz says. 'We figured out a way to make a 'forest' that gastronomically fit into Argentina, which has the largest concentration of fossils in the world. It's pretty elaborate.' Alinea We were fortunate enough to be pretty popular off the bat. We just got super busy, and honestly, it never stopped. And then, in 2007, I got diagnosed with stage 4 tongue cancer. A lot of the guests weren't sure if they should even still visit. It was quiet for a bit while I was going to treatment. On the back end of 2008, we started to pick up some momentum. In 2010, the World's 50 Best named us Best in North America. And then in 2011, they did the same. And that really put us on the public diner's map. In 2016, after we were 10 years old, we renovated. With the downstairs dining room came this experimental menu. So that really catapulted our creativity further, and we just never stopped. I don't think we ever will. Thinking back on 20 years, there's an element of maturity that's hard to articulate. When you've had restaurants like Le Bernadin and the French Laundry, restaurants that have been around for 20 years or more, there's a certain intangible maturity. I believe that the employees and their guests can feel that. Looking back, I appreciate our resilience. The pandemic was disastrous for everyone, and the fact that we made it through that, that we kept everybody employed, I'm very proud of. Everything has changed. Wages have changed; rents have changed. There's a lot more reform to do. Here at the restaurant, it's changed tremendously. Back in 2005, there was a cliche of repression, toxicity, 17-hour days; nobody cared, nobody got paid. And now that has dramatically changed. Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Sign up for Eater's newsletter The freshest news from the food world every day Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
