At its core, Día de los Muertos is an expression of love, transforming grief into a celebration of life while connecting generations to the legacies of those who came before.
Families during the Mexican holiday often create ofrendas, altars built to honor and welcome the spirits of deceased loved ones back home. Frequently, these ofrendas feature the favorite foods and drinks of the departed, along with photos, candles and marigolds.
Through sharing food and beverages with the world, Cinthya Cisneros has turned the love she has for her cultural roots into a celebration of those who propelled her to this moment. Officially opened during the Día de los Muertos weekend in 2025, Con Amor Botanas y Tequila marks the newest chapter in Cisneros’ journey, leaving a lasting culinary mark on the foundation of Napa.
“When I was thinking about the concept, I wanted to make sure everybody who comes in here can get an essence of paying homage to those that came before us,” Cisneros said.
As the plans for the space were beginning to take shape, Cisneros remembers searching for a name that would capture the heart of her offering to the community. While talking to her mother, Juana, Cisneros recalled telling her that she wanted a name filled with love.
“She’s like, ‘Well, why don’t you call it with love,’” Cisneros said with a smile.
In that moment, Con Amor was officially born.
“It’s an ode, made with a lot of love, to our community,” Cisneros said.
The restaurant started as an idea Cisneros had for a separate space where people waiting in line at La Cheve could gather to have a drink and a snack while they waited to be called for the main event. Although that initial concept didn’t materialize, Cisneros said the idea was too good to put down, and she couldn’t let it go.
So, Cisneros and her team began looking for a space that could bring the concept to life. They eventually found a spot in downtown Napa, at 815 Main St., just across from Veterans Memorial Park.
“If you love La Cheve in the morning, you’re going to love Con Amor at night,” Cisneros said. “What better place to do this than doing it downtown? It’s like a whole other world we get to add the flavors of La Cheve to.”
The space itself is small and cozy, set up to resemble a long table, inviting guests to chat with their neighbors should they wish to do so. Hand-painted murals by Arleene Correa Valencia, a local Latinx artist, make the space feel welcoming while clearly paying homage to Día de los Muertos themes of honoring the past with love and joy.
“When people come in, I want them to be sucked in to all of the little details,” Cisneros said. “Maybe one day, when they come in, they focus on one corner of the way, and another time they come in and see something on the shelf and focus on that. All of the details are very intentional.”
Con Amor expands on Cisneros’ culinary voice, while once again serving as a bridge between her two “culturas” — the culture of her Mexican heritage and that of her Napa upbringing. The menu reads like a conversation between those two interconnected worlds, with botanas anchoring the concept.
In Mexico, Cisneros explained that botanas, the Spanish word for snack, are not an afterthought. There’s no haphazardly placed bag of chips alongside store-bought salsa.
Instead, botanas are a series of small, flavorful plates meant to accompany drinks and long conversations between friends and family.
Although Con Amor provides a full dinner menu, botanas are given equal care and attention at the restaurant. One of Cisneros’ favorites — aguachile de chicharrón — was born from an idea that often kept her up at night.
For months, La Cheve’s weekend customers unknowingly served as guinea pigs as she tested the combination that was destined to be a part of Con Amor’s menu. Those customers, much like Cisneros herself, were obsessed with the dish despite how weird the combination appears on paper.
“That is one of the botanas that I think is a perfect representation of the fusion here,” Cisneros said. “These two items are super-Mexican, but never together. So it’s this completely new thing.”
Another standout, the sopisa, merges a sope — a handmade masa base traditionally topped with beans, meat and cilantro — with pizza. The masa is formed and layered with mozzarella and house-made ricotta, fried, then topped in the style of a sope.
“It’s so fire,” Cisneros said. “I love that it’s literally bringing these two plates together that I love.”
Desserts, too, reflect collaboration across generations. Her mother, La Cheve’s head baker, is known for her tres leches cake. Together, they reimagined chocoflan — the classic layered dessert of chocolate cake and flan — into a tres leches-chocoflan hybrid that feels both nostalgic and new.
“When you put good and good together,” Cisneros says, “it has to be good.”
Behind the humor is a serious creative drive. Ideas lodge in her mind and refuse to leave until she tests them. The kitchen becomes a laboratory of heritage and experimentation.
The result isn’t fusion for novelty’s sake. It’s a lived experience expressed through food and shaped by someone who grew up translating between cultures.
In a valley known for wine, Con Amor’s tequila-forward bar stands out as another expression of bridging Cisneros’ cultural roots. With a focus on additive-free tequilas from small producers, putting tequila front and center honors the spirit’s relevance in Mexican culture.
Classic cocktails like margaritas and martinis appear on the menu, but each has a subtle Mexican twist. One of the signature drinks, La Luchadora, layers passionfruit, vodka, and a custom sparkling wine she created with her business partner, adding brightness and a refreshing twist to a well-known martini variant.
Con Amor remains a work in progress, with Cisneros centering herself on a constant desire to learn, coupled with a curiosity that doesn’t quit.
The small dining room, Cisneros added, is both a blessing and a constraint. Back-to-back reservations can create pressure. Guests often linger, which makes sense in a space built for conversation, but turnover matters as well.
Additionally, although she’s thrilled with the reception Con Amor has had during the winter months, the team is already brainstorming ways to better adapt to the typical Napa slowdown.
During the restaurant’s soft opening, Cisneros said that the dining room was filled with La Cheve regulars and other supporters of her vision and voice. Those crowds, she said, offered grace when dishes or timing faltered, which was critical in allowing her and her team to grow.
Opening restaurants has forced her to adapt repeatedly. At La Cheve, service style was shaped by a too-small kitchen. At Con Amor, it’s shaped by the room’s intimacy. Each space dictates its own rhythm.
“Even though it seems like a well-oiled machine, I’m still learning,” Cisneros said. “That’s the beauty of owning restaurants — I love growing, and I love feeling uncomfortable.”
In recent years, talking about her upbringing as an immigrant has gone from uncomfortable to a realization that she’s in a position where it feels like a duty to speak out about her community and their struggles.
Cisneros was born in Michoacán, Mexico, as the eldest of three siblings and has lived in Napa since the age of 4. She began her career in 2018, working as a bartender shortly after finishing her last year of teaching high school chemistry.
Shortly afterward, Cisneros got into home beer brewing and eventually founded La Cheve, her family-owned Mexican bakery, craft beer taproom and restaurant, in 2020 inside Napa’s historic Old Adobe building at Soscol Avenue and the Silverado Trail.
“I lived it,” Cisneros said. “What better person to speak about issues than someone who actually understands them? It’s very special, but it comes with a lot of extras. You’re going to have people keeping an extra eye on things. I think it’s a blessing that I can showcase our culture. I can showcase spaces that are very creative and unique to us and who we are, and tell our stories in places that I think we need to be heard.”
In her restaurants, Cisneros sees a kind of quiet advocacy unfolding daily. Families gather to celebrate milestones. Industry workers stop in after late shifts. Regulars return week after week. The dining room becomes a refuge.
One recent evening, a family drove from Stockton to celebrate a grandmother who had died. They had never visited Con Amor before but felt drawn to the space — a place that honors Día de los Muertos and those who came before. They gathered around the table the night before her funeral, sharing food and memories.
Moments like that, Cisneros says, remind her why she does this work.
Additionally, Cisneros speaks proudly when recalling what she envisioned as the true marker of eventual success while still in college — being able to give back to the community through scholarships.
The success of La Cheve made that vision a reality, enabling the restaurant to regularly provide scholarships to local students in the Napa Valley. Con Amor, Cisneros said, is allowing her and her team to expand those opportunities.
“It’s a lot of hard work to get to this point in time right now,” she added. “That makes it even more of a blessing that we are able to donate to local organizations that have supported us to be where we’re at.”
Although she said she used to think in terms of big-picture milestones about what life would look like in the future, Cisneros said she is now content to take things one day at a time. She’s focused on truly enjoying the moments with her teams at La Cheve and Con Amor.
But Cisneros also acknowledges her relentless curiosity and imagination. She sees beauty in creativity born out of ideas that linger in the back of her head, eventually begging to be let out into the world.
“There’s all these people that have great stories that wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t just curious about their curiosity,” Cisneros said. “So who knows? Maybe something creative will pop into my head and I’ll have to put it out into the world. But for right now, I’m literally just thinking about tomorrow.”
