The first reservation you need to make in 2026 isn’t for the splashy L.A. version of an Italian restaurant from New York City. Or the debut of another restaurant from a celebrity chef. It’s for the reopening (sort of) of Bäco Mercat.
On Dec. 19, Josef Centeno closed the doors of Bar Amá, his Tex-Mex-leaning restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, and reopened the next evening as Le Dräq by Bar Amá and Bäco Mercat. The restaurant is a hybrid of Bar Amá and Takoria, the self-described bizarro taqueria that Centeno debuted out of the space earlier this year. And the return of Bäco Mercat, a restaurant the chef closedin the thick of the pandemic in 2020.
“Bäco just kind of stopped during COVID,” says Centeno. “I don’t feel like I had finished what I started there and I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to bring it back without feeling like I was trying to repeat something.”
It’s difficult to quantify the influence Centeno has had on the city’s dining scene, or the contributions he made to what was once the great revitalization of downtown Los Angeles. At one point, the chef commanded the corner of 4th and Main streets with a cluster of restaurants this paper once dubbed the “Centenoplex.” At its heart was the petite, always bustling Bäco Mercat.
Opened in 2011, it was a place built around the bäco, a Centeno creation that was a soft, supple flatbread that blistered like a flour tortilla, with the thickness and chew of good naan. But the restaurant was so much more than flatbread sandwiches. Ricotta cavatelli with pork belly and soujouk. Chicken “ribs” doused in chile vinegar. Catalan-style cocas lavished with chicken escabeche, zhoug and spiced labneh. Centeno introduced Angelenos to a cuisine fueled by a smart, thoughtful and consistently bold oscillation of cultural influences.
It was everything he grew up eating, everything he ate on his travels and everything and everyone that represents Los Angeles, on a plate.
“People have been pretty continually asking for [Bäco Mercat], so it was also just listening to people,” says Centeno. “I don’t consider this a reboot; it’s more of a continuation kind of phoenix rising from the ashes sort of thing.”
The new restaurant name stems from the Catalan word “drac.”
“It means shapeshifter, or like Dracula,” he says.
Centeno took creative license with the word, settling on the name Le Dräq. The logo, which resembles a three-headed dragon, grew out of an image Centeno created of his dogs Bear and Winston (for which his adjacent fine dining restaurant Orsa & Winston is named), and their cousin Cash.
“For some reason, a chimera came into my visualization and those three are like the hungriest beasts,” he says. “The three heads represent Bear, Winston and Cash, but it also represents Bäco, Amá and Takoria.”
The two-sided menu mimics the two sides of a record, with the A-side devoted to re-imagined favorites from both Bäco Mercat and Bar Amá. The bäco returns as a cheese-infused flatbread, with Centeno folding shredded Oaxacan string cheese into the bread dough. It’s even softer than the original, and wonderfully chewy. He folds it around breaded and fried shrimp, fava bean fritters, oxtail or Wagyu short rib.
The coca 2.0 is still under development, but at the moment is made with a vegan dough. The impossibly slender, cracker-like crust is in the running for the best bar-style pizza in town. The mushroom coca incorporates dehydrated shiitake mushrooms, yuzu kosho and a cream reduction spiked with dashi. It’s drizzled with anchovy juice before service for an extra blast of umami.
If you miss the Bäco Mercat Caesar Brussels sprouts, or Bäzole (Centeno’s take on a pozole), they are all here, alongside Bar Amá favorites like the green chicken enchiladas and nacho towers of hot, fresh chips with golden queso that cascades down the sides.
The B-side of the menu is all Takoria, with a market-driven list of more vegetable-forward items that will change frequently. Recently there was a persimmon salad with kale; roasted acorn squash with dry tepin salsa and agnolotti filled with chestnuts.
“It’s going to be like a shuffle playlist,” says Centeno. “I didn’t want the menu to be so overwhelming, but we’ve already started getting requests for dishes we used to make like the poblano and grape soup.”
Diners can expect around eight dishes from Bäco Mercat, eight from Bar Amá and another eight from Takoria.
“The food reflects new experiences, new ingredients I’ve learned about, new techniques and how I’ve grown or gained more balance,” says Centeno. “The way I eat now is completely different than how I ate 10 years ago.”
For a while, there was no red meat on the menu at Bar Amá. Centeno has made the decision to stop serving octopus and pork, but beef is integral to the Le Dräq menu, and to the restaurant’s new burger.
Centeno’s father was a butcher, and the Le Dräq burger starts with his father’s percentages of chuck, sirloin and other cuts of beef. It’s a thick cheeseburger covered in Havarti cheese, with juices that run wild when you take a bite. Centeno dresses the burger with a slab of iceberg lettuce for crunch, raw red onion and both a whole grain mustard with green peppercorn and a tartar thousand island sauce.
The burger is built on a bun made from the same pillow-soft milk bread Centeno serves next door at Orsa & Winston.
For the last several weeks, Centeno has been making changes to the interior of the restaurant. He fixed the audio system so that the sounds of the Smiths, Twisted Sister, Jeff Buckley and Wilco will create a genre-flowing soundtrack throughout your meal. A Bäco Mercat sign now sits near the rear of the restaurant while you’ll find Bar Amá signage near the large mirror in the dining room. Centeno went through 10 different variations of teal paint before blending his own color to match the blue on the walls at Bäco Mercat.
“I was trying to re-create the feeling of Bäco, but still have the Amá thread, so it felt like Bäco again because it had a certain feel that people really liked,” he says. “Different enough but familiar, which I guess is the way I cook. You wouldn’t have necessarily thought of this combo, but it works and it’s familiar.”
Centeno plans to eventually open Le Dräq for lunch and brunch service. To feast on a shrimp bäco for lunch again with a side of Caesar Brussels sprouts? The new year is looking brighter already.
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