El Charro Restaurant & Cocktail Lounge, a Mesa icon for almost 60 years, isn’t dead after all. The family-run Mexican restaurant, closed for four years, will reopen next week.
The restaurant began life as El Charro Cafe on Main Street in downtown Mesa in the 1940s, but owner Fred Munoz moved it to larger digs on Country Club just north of Main in 1958.
Almost nothing changed at El Charro for the next six decades – not the food, not the decor, and not its habit of closing for two months every summer.
After its summer closure in 2017, however, the restaurant never reopened, its sign left reading ‘‘Closed for vacation – Open after Labor Day’’ for years.
Munoz passed away in 2012, but his family was determined to keep El Charro alive. One of his daughters, Eva Munoz Orta, has led a nearly four-year effort to update and relaunch El Charro.
The restaurant intends to open on Cinco de Mayo.
