Centeno Josef - Baco: vivid recipes from the heart of Los Angeles

DEDICATION FROM JOSEF CENTENO

For my grandparents and parents, who showed me the importance of work ethic and persistence and never giving up.

Text copyright 2017 by Josef Centeno and Betty Hallock
Photographs copyright 2017 by Dylan James Ho and Jeni Afuso
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781452155784 (epub, mobi)

Names: Centeno, Josef, author. | Hallock, Betty, author.
Title: Bco : vivid recipes from the heart of Los Angeles / by Josef Centeno and Betty Hallock ; photographs by Dylan + Jeni.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016057668 | ISBN 9781452154688 (hc : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Cooking. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classification: LCC TX714 .C4465 2017 | DDC 641.5dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016057668

Prop styling by Betty Hallock
Food styling by Josef Centeno and Andy Villaluna
Designed by Vanessa Dina
Typesetting by Frank Brayton

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AUTHORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is part love letter to downtown Los Angeles. Thank you to all of the neighbors, friends, and customers whom we have met here over the years.

Thank you to the staff at Bco Mercat, Bar Am, Orsa & Winston, Ledlow, and P.Y.T. You are the pulse of the corner at Fourth and Main streets. Many had a direct hand in making this bookby pitching in to test, tweak, measure, remeasure, prep, style, and troubleshoot whenever neededincluding Joel Stovall, Anna Lorein, Francisco Carcamo, Yolanda Mejia, and Kevin Lee.

Special thanks to:

Andy Villaluna, for killing it since day one and always doing it with a joke and a smile. Sal Vasquez, who has become known around here as the Maestro. Genevieve Hardison, who works crazy hard and always makes sure the restaurants run as smoothly as possible. And Tom Gilmore and Jerri Perrone for giving a chef his big break.

The whole Chronicle team, including Sarah Billingsley for believing in this book and shepherding the journey and Vanessa Dina for her design vision. To both for always being so patient, kind, and understanding.

Kitty Cowles, who made this book happen, and for her support, energy, and high standards. Couldnt imagine doing this without you.

Dylan James Ho and Jeni Afuso, for all of the care that went into the photos, the shared meals, and steadfast friendship.

Thanks also to Dawn Yanagihara and Jane Tunks Demel for all the detailed checking and double-checking.

And to our dogs Bear and Winston, who kept us company during many late nights of talking and writing and cooking.

Downtown is the vibrant, pulsing, always evolving heart of Los Angeles. Its boundaries are roughly the L.A. River and a couple of crisscrossing freeways, and in between are about five square miles that make up downtown. Parts are gritty, parts are shiny and new, and all of its majestic.

At the intersection of Fourth and Main Streets in an area known as the Historic Core, I opened five restaurants in five years: Bco Mercat, Bar Am, Orsa & Winston, Ledlow, and P.Y.T., in that order.

A lot has changed since the start. When I opened Bco Mercat in a 110-year-old Italian Renaissance Revival building called the San Fernando in 2011, it was on a dicey corner on the border between Gallery Row and Skid Row. Now the block is full of boutiques, renovated lofts, nightclubs, and sushi bars.

But the streets around here still look a lot like they did more than a hundred years ago. The Historic Core is known for its early twentieth-century buildings: the citys first skyscraper, its original stock exchange, and dozens more landmarks. Every Saturday morning, by coincidence, a walking tour of historic downtown starts directly in front of Bco Mercat as servers are setting up the patio for brunch.

Up until the second half of the last century, the neighborhood was the entertainment and financial center of the city, filled with big banks, grand hotels, and movie palaces like the Orpheum and Million Dollar Theater. Think dripping chandeliers, opulent ballrooms, and Beaux Arts or Art Deco facades along tree-lined streets.

But after World War II, the movie houses shifted to Hollywood Boulevard, and the banks relocated to high-rises uphill and farther west. Residents left for the suburbs, and businesses shuttered. Downtown was abandoned, hit by an epidemic of drugs and prostitution.

Now in the middle of a revival, the Historic Core is becoming the greatest neighborhood in L.A. all over again. The corner of Fourth and Main has its own particular charms: a Berlin-esque nightclub in an alley behind Bco Mercat, a Shepard Fairey mural around the corner, and the Regent Theaterone of L.A.s first movie palaces and now an always-packed concert venuedown the street.

On any given night, you might bump into a local character like Andr (not homeless, he says, just residentially challenged), who will either invite you to karaoke or ask you for change, or Gwyneth Paltrow, hopping onto the curb from the back seat of a black Mercedes G-Class.

If you look skyward, youll see strung white lights zigzagging across the tops of buildings. Across the street from Bco Mercat and Ledlow is the former Farmers and Merchants Bank (the future site of a contemporary art museum), built to resemble a Roman temple. Kitty-corner is the old Barclay Hotel, which has seen better days but is still a popular film location, especially as a Manhattan stand-in (its lobby was the caf in As Good as It Gets, a coffee shop in 500 Days of Summer, and a casino in Inception).

Before opening Bco Mercat, I cooked Spanish-influenced small plates in West Hollywood, $10-a-course tasting menus at a restaurant in Koreatown, from the tiny kitchen of an Echo Park caf with just my sous chef and me as pretty much the entire staff, and at a Little Tokyo canteen and bar, where every night we knocked out several dozen specials scrawled out on two big chalkboards for hundreds of covers.

And then I landed here in the middle of downtown. Its where I live and work, with five restaurants and a loft in a one-block radius. I walk to work every morning. I go home in the middle of the afternoon between lunch and dinner service to take my dogs to the park. And every night I am at each of the restaurants, cooking on the line at one or more, and checking in at the others.

Theres no other part of Los Angeles like this one. Lightning-fast change plays out against a backdrop of turn-of-the-century architecture. And no neighborhood is as mixedold, young, up-and-coming, down-and-out, of all cultures and persuasions. Everyone fits in.