With rent rising, Durham’s Brightleaf Square loses one of its oldest restaurants
The flagship El Rodeo Mexican Restaurant, a cornerstone of Durham’s Brightleaf Square district for more than 30 years, will close next month in search of a new location.
The owners of El Rodeo announced this week that the restaurant would leave its home of 32 years, pointing to a proposed rent increase during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“Spirits are low,” Javier Onate said. “Even with all this happening right now (with the pandemic) and losing customers, our rent is going up.”
The closing leaves Brightleaf Square, once one of Durham’s busiest restaurant districts, now home to only one restaurant and an ice cream parlor along its pedestrian mall. In recent years, three prominent blocks of Brightleaf have been purchased in pieces by Charlotte-based Asana Partners, a group specializing in redeveloping urban properties. Asana Partners did not respond to a message requesting comment.
Triangle’s first El Rodeo
In 1989, Javier Onate left California for Durham to help open the Brightleaf El Rodeo restaurant with Rigoberto Ibarra and Antonio Lopez. That move launched a family of restaurants throughout the Triangle, including four others bearing the El Rodeo name, two in Raleigh and two in Durham.
From the beginning, Javier Onate said the restaurant’s queso was a favorite and that the restaurant thrived on Brightleaf’s office workers on their lunch hour. In recent years, as Durham’s weight has shifted downtown and the police station moved a dozen blocks over, business slacked some.
But even in the pandemic, Onate said the restaurant had used its savings to never miss a rent payment. Like other restaurants, El Rodeo limped through the past few months operating at a loss. But Onate said that when the light at the end of the tunnel meant higher rent, it was time to look elsewhere.
“That one was a good location for us,” Onate said. “It’s like a part of you.”
As the flagship, the Brightleaf Square location was a sentimental favorite, Javier Onate’s son, Andres, said.
“That was the first restaurant my dad was invited into,” Onate said. “That’s the one we credit with having put my brothers and sisters through school. That’s the one that started it all.”
Among Onate’s siblings, two are accountants, one’s a radiologist, another is a mechanic and one works in heating and air. Andres Onate stayed in the El Rodeo business, working at all five locations and now partner in the North Durham restaurant.
For him, the Brightleaf spot also marked the beginning, where he started at 14 years old washing dishes, busing tables, delivering tortilla chips and even serving guests.
“I got tired of never having any money so I said, ‘Put me to work,’” Onate said. “My oldest daughter, she’s five and she loves that location. I’m sad she won’t get to grow up in it.”
Restaurants in Brightleaf
El Rodeo’s departure follows years of closing restaurants in Brightleaf, including popular Duke hangout Satisfaction, Italian restaurant Trattoria Salve, fondue restaurant The Little Dipper and Mount Fuji Japanese restaurant. Across the street, major retail shops Morgan Imports closed and Parker & Otis moved locations.
The restaurant exodus leaves Clouds Brewing and Sugar Koi ice cream shop as the remaining Brightleaf Square restaurants. On the other side of Main Street, the blocks are filled with restaurants, including The Federal, James Joyce Pub, Goorsha, Devine’s Pub, Mavericks, Torero’s Mexican Restaurant and Saint James Seafood, which is temporarily closed due to the pandemic.
With many businesses working remotely, Andres Onate said the lack of downtown workers wiped out El Rodeo’s lunch crowd, where an average day is now around a half dozen orders. He said that customers returned to the El Rodeo locations in north and south Durham, but not downtown.
“Those bounced back a lot quicker; we used to be a lunch-oriented business,” Onate said. “Ever since COVID hit were lucky to get seven orders for lunch.”
The El Rodeo lease expires in March, and Onate said the proposed six month extension included a 3% increase.
“We can’t pay anymore, we’re in the negative every month,” Onate said. “Any more added to our rent is more taken out of what we have saved up. It’s cheaper to close it. ... I don’t have anything against the new owners. Business is business.”
The Brightleaf El Rodeo will remain open until March 28.
“We just want to say thank you to all our customers for supporting us all these years,” Javier Onate said.
This story was originally published February 22, 2021 at 2:35 PM.
