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Suprise! Bad Bunny buys out Palo Alto restaurant
The owner of Macarena in Palo Alto tells KTVU how Bad Bunny bought out the restaurant.
PALO ALTO, Calif. - While Puerto Rican restaurants across the Bay Area hoped to give a taste of home to Bad Bunny during his Super Bowl stay, one Palo Alto tapas spot landed the buyout request.
With just hours to prepare, the team at Macarena canceled all other reservations, created a special menu called the "Benito edition" and locked away phones to keep the night a secret.
CEO David Linares told KTVU how it happened: He got a phone call on Saturday night before the Super Bowl that "someone important" wanted to come to the restaurant.
"I didn't know until two or three hours later" who it was, Linares said. Then he kept asking himself: "Is it true?"
Yes, it turned out to be true: Bad Bunny and his entourage wanted to celebrate their halftime show success at his restaurant.
"We started moving fast," he said, adding that his heart was racing because "Benito was coming."
He described the performer and his crew as very "flexible." They liked everything on the menu from their paellas to jamón.
Linares said Macarena is an intimate restaurant, and he guessed that the international superstar might have wanted to shy away from the spotlight and be treated "like a normal person."
He said Bad Bunny was incredibly nice and humble, shaking hands with "every single member of the staff" before leaving the restaurant.
As for how the entertainer chose Macarena?
"To this day we're still wondering why we were the chosen ones," Linares said, adding that more than a week later, he's still riding the high.