End Of An Era In Austin: El Patio Closed After 65 Years

AUSTIN, TX — You had a good run, El Patio. After 65 years in business, the popular Tex-Mex restaurant at the corner of 30th and Guadalupe streets officially closed on Friday as indicated by signs reading "on vacation" affixed to the entry point by the following day.

In a previous interview with Patch, the founders daughter said she and two siblings decided it was finally time to retire. News of the Aug. 9 closing prompted a deluge of patrons — many of them customers since childhood — embarking on something of a culinary pilgrimage to the decidedly unadorned structure at 2938 Guadalupe St. housing the environs from which their favorite dishes were prepared.

Those interviewed spoke with reverence of the eatery's late founder, noting his penchant of serving pre-meal chips and salsa not with the former vessel but with saltine crackers. A box containing those incongruous salsa scoopers was placed at the front counter like makeshift altar in silent homage to family patriarch and founder Paul Joseph after his death.

One woman shared memories of first visiting the restaurant as a child, and sticking to the same, exact food order in adulthood as her husband eagerly awaited entry while envisioning the onion-laden enchiladas he was soon to devour. The couple drove from Dripping Springs on their 49th wedding anniversary to visit their old haunt a final time.

Another lady recalled how the late restaurateur Joseph took her by the hand for a spontaneous tour of the place when she got fussy, thoughtfully commenting on food preparation process inside the busy kitchen in offering her a distraction and welcome reprieve for her parents. Fast forward many years later, and he would do the same with her daughter as the child became restless herself inside the restaurant.

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As much as the food — not fancy fare, mind you, especially in a glimmering city with abundant top-rated restaurants — it was these memories that kept folks coming back. Those interviewed lamented the end of yet another iconic eatery in a city undergoing astonishing gentrification and an influx of job-seeking out-of-towners with different gustatory palates.

Beckoning with its sombrero-topped neon sign illuminated at each nightfall, El Patio beckoned traffic along Guadalupe Street for 65 years. Photo by Tony Cantú/Patch staff.

The attendant lamentation was as much for the closing of the place as it was for an old Austin that is fast disappearing from the construction-site-filled landscape of a new and emerging Austin. El Patio is the latest casualty of this progress. The Austin many knew barely exists anymore, in its place shimmering new establishments beckoning a changing demographic, as interviewed patrons invariably described unprompted.

Dynamics that made the city charming to begin with are being excised — at an alarming rate for many — replaced with a new set of more updated delights to spark the fancy of an inexorable influx of new residents with more contemporary tastes. That's what patrons conveyed to Patch, in so many words anyhow.

The lunch rush on El Patio's final day on Friday was uncharacteristically sparse, as if visited by last-minute mourners arriving at a funeral parlor after the first, big spasms of grief by the initial rush trekking masses. Two men under a protective tent installed in the final days to shield patrons from blistering triple-digit heat amid a one-hour wait to get in said the breakfast crowd was big — lines winding across the building, one told Patch.

After days marked by big crowds of people waiting under the unforgiving heat of a Texas summer for a final El Patio meal, the last lunch hour there was sparsely attended. Photo by Tony Cantú/Patch staff.

By midday, the scene was calm. Affixed to the windows were handmade signs — nothing fancy, just hastily scribbled messaging that reflected the simple nature of the place itself. "On vacation," read the two-word alert. It's a permanent vacation from which there is no return, leaving behind stillness replacing a once-brisk business in the last gasps of an Austin history quickly fading.

El Patio owners offered a two-word postscript to those arriving not knowing the place has closed after 65 years on Guadalupe Street. Photo by Tony Cantú/Patch staff.