Astoria's Big Calexico Restaurant Closes After Less Than 1 Year

ASTORIA, QUEENS — Less than a year after it opened up in a prominent storefront on 30th Avenue, the Mexican restaurant Calexico closed abruptly over the weekend — and its owner told Patch that the pandemic is to blame.

The small chain's website now lists the Astoria location as "no longer open for business," though it had been serving customers as recently as Friday afternoon, residents wrote on a Facebook thread about the closure.

Calexico co-founder Dave Vendley confirmed the closure when reached Monday, saying it was a "delayed response from COVID."

Calexico opened in December 2021 in the triangle-shaped, standalone building between Newtown Avenue and 32nd Street. Its arrival had been in the works since 2019 — and Vendley said the pandemic hit right as Calexico was halfway through renovating the space.

The pandemic "completely halted our construction for more than a year," Vendley said — but they were too far along to abandon the new location.

By the time Calexico opened, it had "a very short runway to try to succeed," Vendley said. Though it gained traction over the ensuing few months and developed a solid group of regulars, the company did not have enough money saved up to weather many dry spells.

Calexico's "death knell" was the recent heat wave, which slowed down business even further, he said.

Its demise is the latest setback for the storefront, which commenters on Astoria Facebook and Reddit pages are calling "cursed" for the frequent turnover there.

Since 2014, the 30th Avenue space has seen four different tenants: the Greek restaurant Athens Cafe closed that year and was followed by the Southern spot Burnside Biscuits, which in turn was succeeded by the barbecue restaurant Salt & Bone. (The latter two of which were owned by the team behind Bareburger.)

But Vendley laughed off the speculation that Calexico's difficulties stemmed from the location itself, or from its landlord, who he said had worked closely with the restaurant's ownership.

"We’re very sure it’s not cursed and that someone’s going to do really great here," Vendley said. "We wish it could've been us."

In fact, Calexico's closure is all the more painful because its owners are "very confident" it would have succeeded in Astoria were it not for the pandemic. Astoria was where Vendley first lived with his brothers when they moved to New York from their hometown: the California border city of Calexico, which became the restaurant's namesake.

"We felt like we were getting a foothold in the neighborhood," Vendley said. "We really love Astoria."

Given the 30th Avenue storefront's difficulties, some residents have begun floating the idea of repurposing the building as a community space, or demolishing it entirely to create a plaza or park.

But Vendley noted that whatever business moves into the space will have an easier road, since it will benefit from the interior improvements that Calexico spent significant sums to carry out.

Vendley founded Calexico in 2006 along with his two brothers. Calexico has expanded in the ensuing years to four different locations around the city (not including Astoria), plus two more in Detroit and Bahrain.

Have an Astoria news tip? Contact reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.