Lugya'h Earns a Bib Gourmand in Its First Year, Bringing Zapotec Cooking to the Michelin Guide

• Lugya'h, an indigenous Zapotec restaurant inside Los Angeles' Maydan Market, earned a Bib Gourmand designation in the 2026 Michelin Guide California.

• The award was announced at Michelin's June 24 ceremony, within the restaurant's first year of operation.

• Chef Alfonso "Poncho" Martinez and business partner Odilia Romero previously ran Poncho's Tlayudas, a backyard pop-up that earned a James Beard Semifinalist nod in 2024.

Lugya'h has gone from a backyard pop-up to a Michelin-recognized restaurant in under two years, and it did so without changing what made the food worth seeking out in the first place.

Michelin's Bib Gourmand recognizes restaurants serving high-quality food at accessible prices. Lugya'h received the designation at the June 24 ceremony, a fast turnaround for a restaurant that opened its first brick-and-mortar location within the last year inside Maydan Market, chef Rose Previte's 10,000-square-foot market concept anchored by a shared live-fire hearth.

Before Lugya'h, Martinez and Romero ran Poncho's Tlayudas, a pop-up in South Central that built a following on word of mouth and earned Martinez a James Beard Semifinalist nod for Best Chef: California in 2024. Lugya'h, named for the Zapotec word for "the face and heart of the plaza," carries that food forward: tlayudas cooked over Maydan Market's communal hearth, house-made moronga, and dishes drawn from family recipes across Oaxaca and California, including turkey mole and banana-leaf tamales.

Romero is also co-founder of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, an Indigenous women-led nonprofit that has spent more than two decades organizing migrant communities around language access and cultural preservation. That work runs alongside the restaurant rather than apart from it: Lugya'h's stated mission is introducing diners to Zapotec cuisine, identity and language, not simply serving a menu inspired by it.