Sale of Arlington Restaurant Doesn’t Go Through

Zocalo Cocina Mexicana is staying with owners Armida Amor and Ricardo Ramos, the Board of Selectmen announced Monday.

In March, the Mexican restaurant on Broadway appeared to be headed to new owners, Nicolas and Maria Portillo and Jose Landaverde, of the newly-formed Arlington Restaurant Group. At the time, the Board of Selectmen even granted these new owners a common victualler license to operate the restaurant and a beer and wine license.

However, on Monday, the board reversed these decisions, as the sale did not go through.

The new owners had offered to buy the restaurant (the business assets, not the real estate) for $152,200, according to their license applications. They also had a five-year lease with Arlington-based Chios Realty Trust for $2,000 per month.

Nicolas Portillo, a native of El Salvador, owns Portillo Food Market in East Boston, while Landaverde has been a waiter at Zocalo for almost a decade.

The new owners said they were planning to operate Zocalo “exactly as it operates right now.”

Zocalo, at 203A Broadway, opened in 1997 as Ole Mexican Grill. It became Zocalo in 2005.