Bar Tako hits San Jose in late February with short rib tamales, togarashi shrimp tacos, and Mexican wines
You’ll have to hurry if you want to make it to Bar Tako, a new Mexican-Japanese spot coming to San Jose in late February. The restaurant-ish space is a temporary installation — a limited edition, perhaps, only operating through June 2026.
Bar Tako is a project from industry vets Derek Belanger and Greg Nasser, alum of Back of the House and its many, many San Francisco restaurants. Mike and Grant Messenger, the family who owns the building that once housed Olla Cocina, tapped Belanger and Nasser to install a temporary restaurant residency until they can ready the space for its next permanent restaurant. “Mike decided he wanted to open his restaurant in this space, but because of all the activity happening in San Jose and the Bay Area over the next six months, he was really concerned about having a vacant dark storefront in the prime downtown area in San Jose,” Belanger says. “He’s been in this community, he owns several restaurants on the block; his family is really committed to making sure that downtown San Jose — and specifically San Pedro Square — has something open. So we had this idea of putting a limited time restaurant in the space.”…