No backing into Nacional

“I see them,” says Alon Ravid, bar manager at Paladar, the new Cuban-themed restaurant in Hollywood, as he rubs his hands together in anticipation. “The ratones [rats] are coming!”

The two-month-old restaurant, owned by the crew that owns the neighboring Nacional lounge, may have an A rating posted on its windows, but its owners are already up to their ears in capturing rats. Not your typical furry rodents. They are hipper than that -- at least, they are trying to be.

“Do you smell them?” says Ravid, surveying the Nacional line on Wilcox Street on a recent Tuesday night. “All you see over there is dudes, bloody dudes. They’re not getting in.” That’s not surprising. The hottest Tuesday night in Hollywood has been at the Nacional lounge for some time. (Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake recently got into a fight there.)

For those waiting in line, there’s time, sometimes hours of it, and the entrepreneurs among them have figured out that Nacional and Paladar are connected. Scenesters not on the list or charming enough to get past the bouncer attempt to sneak into the club through Paladar’s emergency exit, which leads to Nacional.

“They nonchalantly fake the bathroom run before they head straight into the cage,” says Ravid, laughing. “Then you hear beep, a piercing blast, and they are stuck. They find themselves in the Rat Trap.”

They’re actually in a large corridor with three doors: one to the alley, one to Paladar and one to Nacional. The latter two can’t be opened from the corridor, so the rats must retreat to the alley or wait to be freed from inside Paladar. To teach them a lesson, the Paladar owners leave the rats in their trap for a while. Then they kindly allow them to exit through the back alley or return to Paladar.

“It’s the funniest thing, just waiting for the rats to show up,” says Ravid.

Maybe he should consider re-naming it the Brat Trap.