Meet the LA restaurateur who designed Bad Bunny's Super Bowl casita

On Sunday afternoon, Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny fell through a roof and into the world of Federico Laboureau, a South L.A. restaurateur who sells empanadas, choripan and milanesa — and who also designed a central stage set for the historic Super Bowl halftime show.

Laboureau is most often found at his Argentinian restaurant Fuegos LA, which he runs with his romantic and business partner Maximilian Pizzi. But with years of experience in production design and fashion, he recently found himself dreaming up the interior of Bad Bunny's casita, a set piece previously only seen from the outside during the Grammy Award-winning rapper and “No Me Quiero Ir De Aqui” singer's stay in Puerto Rico.

During the Super Bowl halftime show, the casita resurfaced again, and this time the world saw its interior for the first time.

“I thought, 'This is incredible,'” Laboreau said.

Although he was not a soccer fan – he had grown up watching Argentine soccer instead – he saw the job as symbolic, a symbol of the Latin American community pulling together in a climate of fear marked by domestic raids and deportations.

“For a Latino — or I think for anyone — a casita means a temple where you come together with your family and your friend and where love happens,” he said. “It's not about the actual set, it's about being part of a big event and showing Latinos that we're here. We're not going anywhere. We're huge. We're happiness, we're passion and we're community.”

The performance also put the spotlight on another L.A. restaurateur: Victor Villa of Villa's Tacos, who danced behind a plancha on the court.

A friend from production reached out to Laboureau in December and asked if he would be interested in taking part in a top-secret project. He signed a small stack of paperwork and then learned what his job would entail: designing the interior of Bad Bunny or Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio's staged casita.

They presented Laboreau with “a white canvas box”: a 20-by-20-foot set with three windows and two doors. They built the Faux Casita in the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall, just minutes from the restaurant.

The restaurateur imagined a typical Abuelita establishment that could represent Bad Bunny's, his or anyone's. As someone who was raised by his grandmother, Laboureau saw the experience as a way to remember and reconnect with his own heritage, filling the space with “little comfortable details” like porcelain figurines and plastic flowers. Because he wanted the knick-knacks to look appropriately aged, he and his team scoured flea markets and second-hand stores in addition to prop shops.

Bad Bunny set up the section inside the casita by pretending to fall through the roof and literally crash a family reunion before continuing with the rest of the performance.

Laboureau and Pizzi met almost 17 years ago in Argentina, with Laboureau working in the fashion industry and Pizzi in the events industry. They moved to Mexico City and then to Los Angeles 12 years ago after shifting their career focus to entertainment production. During their stay here, they created for Disney and Amazon, among others, bought a house and became citizens.

But the film industry came to a standstill during the pandemic and industry strikes. Laboureau and Pizzi had to adapt and, as lifelong food fanatics, started their own business – with no experience as chefs.

They started Fuegos LA humbly by hand-making empanadas in their home kitchen, freezing them, and then selling them to friends. Through word of mouth, they rented a commercial kitchen three months later and were able to expand through delivery platforms.

“We started the business with two pesos, so nothing,” Laboureau said. “We sold two empanadas and then used the money to invest in flyers. We sold another empanadas and bought packaging. Literally it was like that.”

Pop-ups and delivery improved their business, but as interest grew, they needed a permanent space. They found a location in a mall in South Los Angeles, took gastronomy classes and expanded the menu to include Argentinian classics — and some of them had a touch of the international flavors of the couple's travels. Now they source their meat from Argentina and their produce from local farmers markets.

They also use their storefront as a cultural center, offering tango nights, a community farmers market, live jazz, and storytelling supper clubs. They began expanding their business to other stores within the mall. Later this month they plan to open a new dining room along with Argentinian pizzas.

Fuegos LA's success is gradually going beyond their dreams, but amid immigration policies and a climate of fear, Laboureau said that some days he feels like his “American dream is an American nightmare.”

But Pizzi and Laboureau run their business with an ethos similar to Bad Bunny's love-overcomes-hate message from the Super Bowl and Grammy speech: Everything tastes better with love. Love, he said, is Fuegos LA's “main recipe” and a guide during a turbulent time for Latino communities in the United States

“I have my American passport, but it’s challenging what my community is going through,” Laboreau said. “At a time when our president is declaring English the official language, the main show of the Super Bowl with someone singing in Spanish is historic. It was part of something very powerful for my community.”

While Laboreau brought empanadas to Bad Bunny's dressing room, he's not sure the megastar had a chance to try them out. But Benito, like all Angelenos, has an open invitation to try them out at Fuegos LA.

Fuegos LA is located at 3957 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles and is open Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m