Button Mash and Poltergeist are closing in Echo Park this month

At the end of this month, Button Mash owners Jordan Weiss and Gabriel Fowlkes will finally unplug the flashing, glittering video game terminals at the Echo Park bar and arcade. With the closure of Button Mash, one of LA's most imaginative restaurants will also close.

In an Instagram post that went live early Monday morning, both the arcade and its restaurant, Poltergeist, said they will be closing in September. 29.

Facing rising costs, a slowing summer season and a contract extension, both teams decided it was time to come out on top. The timing just felt right – especially when most of the kitchen appliances broke when they made their decision. Poltergeist chef Diego Argoti was told the equipment could run for another 30 days; He said he only needed 21. It was, says the chef, a bit like playing the violin while the Titanic sank.

“We're at the top right now and the best thing we can do, and one of the best feelings we can do, is just stop it on our terms,” Argoti said. “If I let my ego get the better of me and carry on like this, we will disappear and lose money. Right now we could go and pay everyone out, and that’s very rare when we close a restaurant with style and grace.”

Restaurants in Los Angeles are still open at a fast and hopeful pacealthough 2023 and 2024 were extremely difficult years for businesses with pandemic loans coming due, the city's economic impact from strikes in the entertainment industry and rising national costs. Button Mash and Poltergeist, while often full of guests and showered with praise, had to contend with lower guest check averages and slow periods that made it difficult to justify signing another lease.

“There were nights where I thought, 'Man, I wish this place was just an idiot because then it would be easier to make these decisions and pull the trigger and explain it away,'” Weiss said.

“But it always passes the eye test: We have people in the door, we get every award, everything you can possibly achieve, everyone is paying attention, we get all this press, we've somehow lasted this long,” he added added. “Reconciling that with the numbers we've seen, the operating costs and the feeling that the cap is getting visibly lower every week doesn't make sense, but I know other people are in the same boat.”

Plus, Weiss says, Button Mash was never designed to maximize restaurant profits: It was built a decade ago to spotlight craft beer, creative food and vintage arcade gaming blocks from Dodger Stadium. The fact that it survived this long was a pleasant surprise.

Button Mash has been home to a number of pop-ups over the years, including the long-running Starry Kitchen, a 101 List honoree under former LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold.

Weiss and Argoti met there at a follow-up pop-up before the chef discussed the opening menu of Alma, Weiss' Virgil Village cider.

Button Mash was returning from its pandemic-related closure, which almost closed the bar for good. Tap Tacos 1986 to run the food program. When that ended sooner than expected, Weiss contacted Argoti to take over the company.

Argoti's genre-bending restaurant serves playful, occasionally subversive dishes. The Bestia alum has used the space to expand his popular pop-up restaurant Estrano, which often draws throngs of diners to alleyways and other corners of LA for fresh pasta and loud music. Since its launch at Button Mash in 2023, Poltergeist's stunning dishes such as Thai Caesar salads with fried rice paper towers or herb panang lamb neck have garnered attention and awards across the country.

“Poltergeist – what a name! – serves the most manic, uncontrolled and wild cuisine in Los Angeles, and opinions are polarizing accordingly,” LA Times food critic Bill Addison wrote in his Review 2023. “When [Argoti’s] When combinations click, they register as the flavor equivalent of a new language.”

At first, diners didn't know what to make of Poltergeist, and while the response was generally positive, fewer tables were occupied in the summer following its launch, in what is traditionally a slow season for restaurants.

When Button Mash's lease expired in March 2024, the team began to question whether it would even get that far. Argoti, Weiss and Fowlkes thought about making the menu more accessible with burgers and sandwiches, but instead went in the opposite direction, offering dishes like masa-fried whole sea bream — some of the most creative dishes Argoti has prepared there.

Praise for the offbeat, irreverent menu began to pour in, including Addison's review. “Poltergeist” garnered national attention from newspapers like Esquire and, earlier this year, the James Beard Foundation Awards Argoti won as a semi-finalist in the “Best Chef: California” category.

Although it seems critical at the top, the summer is subdued again, costs are rising and rents have increased. It took weeks, perhaps months, for the decision to close to be made. Argoti will not reopen “Poltergeist” anywhere else. Weiss says he and Fowlkes will most likely sell most of their arcade games to collectors.

“I love Poltergeist, but Poltergeist was always built into Button Mash as a room,” Argoti said. “The name 'Noisy Spirit' was all about making noise, attracting attention and creating opportunities – and proving whether I could run a business. People see me as the weird kid in the alley cooking frog legs and now it's like, hey, I could and I would like to. It was really, really cool.”

The next few weeks will be “really, really crazy,” with frequent menu changes and unusual specialties that Argoti has always been slow to bring to market, such as a pasta dish with ricotta and veal brains or a radical lasagne. He wants to bring back the frog legs.

After Sept. 29, the chef plans to host more Estrano pop-ups and mostly disappear from the culinary spotlight for a while. Maybe he's consulting, but in the background he's planning another restaurant, hopefully one he'll run with Weiss again: something smaller, nimbler, maybe something that offers a reduced daily menu and a restaurant with no changes, no… In the evening there is a tasting menu with guard rails where he can give free rein to his culinary madness. Eventually, he wants to open several small restaurants that spotlight other chefs and offer them equality and identity.

But before he ventures into opening another restaurant, Argoti says he needs to take time for himself. The day after his father died, he learned of his selection as a James Beard semifinalist. He hasn't taken the time to process his loss or process it mentally or physically. He has a new puppy to spend time with. And he wants time and space to breathe to see what shape his culinary style will take next.

“I just want to treat this like music or albums: what I cooked two years ago and what I wanted to cook 10 years ago is completely different than what I plan to cook in two or a year,” Argoti said. “The growth is piling up in a way that I’m excited about what I’m cooking and what I want to cook and what that’s going to look like.”

Poltergeist and Button Mash, 1391 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles