Gold Dig #9

Baco Mercat has a very LA bar feel – dimly lit with high exposed-pipe ceilings. It also has tasty food, in particular the Baco, which is the signature flatbread sandwich invented by chef-owner Josef Centeno. Several of the Josef Centeno Group restaurants make appearances on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list, but Baco Mercat is the most affordable of those, so it’s the first one I’ve hit. The bartender was super friendly when we walked in for lunch – I’d bet this would be a fun place to come back for drinks! But the street parking is $6/hour, which might be a deterrent.

The Dish

The Baco bread is a pita-like flatbread that they use to contain meats, veggies, and sauces. Sometimes in sandwich form, sometimes in pizza form.

The Original

The Original is circled on the menu, so of course that’s what we got. It’s a sandwich with pork, beef carnitas,  and salbitxada (cherry tomato and almond paste). Generous portions of the meat were stuffed into the flatbread vessel. The pork was juicy and so good with the creamy and mildly acidic salbitxada sauce and a little bit of bitterness from the greens. Sadly the beef was pretty dry. It left me wishing The Original was just a pork sandwich.

I’d like to have tried one of the pizza-like options they call Coca, but Baco Mercat was the second stop on our 3-restaurant Gold Dig for the day. We’d already been to Langer’s (read all about it), and we were moving on to Mexicali Taco (come along!).

Want to watch us licking the salbitxada sauce off our fingers? Check out the video here!