Diego Argoti lives his life in extremes, but after a decade of working at some of L.A.’s most celebrated restaurants, he’s realized it is not sustainable. Argoti started Estrano, self-described as “street pasta,” as an act of survival and creative expression. A palpable feeling that’s felt when you visit his bizarre, eccentric, weird, emo, energetic, strange pop-up. His food has an element of disruption, challenging your palette with hyper-specific nostalgia through the vehicle of pasta.
In a recent pop-up, he and his crew set up in Echo Park. It’s a slightly chilly night and the line is already halfway down the block. Someone starts passing out slices of Domino’s pizza with caviar on top. On IG he described it as caviar bumps and I almost asked if I had to take it up the nose. The pizza was an act of kindness from Argoti, for having people wait. Because Argoti is still plagued with the same question every time: What if no one shows up?
But to everyone’s surprise in line, Estrano moves with the beastly efficiency of a full-service restaurant. Your order trickles out at a quick pace, potato pancakes topped with a thick slab of grilled tongue so beefy, you’d think it is a ribeye, a paper tray of ketchup and mustard lasagna in a beef ragu and velveeta mornay and topped with fries, broccoli beef ravioli with beef cheek and brown butter. You never feel like you’ve been waiting too long. No where near the three hour wait time to get a burger from Burgers Never Say Die back in the pop-up days. (yes, I did wait that long).
The vibe at Estrano is animated with a hodgepodge collection of weird foos, misfits, rockeros, punks, emos, cooks, chefs, influencers etc. There’s a DJ with a laptop on a table made of a skateboard, projecting moving images of the word “ESTRANO,” as the light washes over Argoti and his crew dancing the dance of chefs.
I later learned that the DJ who curated the music and vibes is Argoti’s homie Alfredo Krayem, he goes by Halfmann Music and he shows up to every pop-up. He creates a GIF and modulates the colors with a switchboard to produce an erratic and hypnotizing strobe light effect, more seizure-inducing than the Porygon episode of Pokemon.