Tecolote Café, a venerable Santa Fe culinary hotspot, will be forced to leave its Cerrillos Road location after 34 years by the end of the month.---
Tecolote General Manager Katie Adkins says that she recently got a letter from restaurant landlord Jerry Honnell saying that the restaurant must leave the grounds by April 30. She says the eviction notice cited "our announcement of moving to [the] Luna [development] in May."
But the problem, Adkins says, is that she never announced that the restaurant was relocating to Luna, a development on Cerrillos and Manhattan where Marble Brewery is slated to reopen its Santa Fe location. Adkins says a January Albuquerque Journal article that reported Tecolote was moving to Luna caused the eviction.
"We had been talking to [Luna]," she says, "but we had yet to sign any formal purchase or lease or anything because we were waiting for funding from the bank."
The Journal story quoted Luna developer Ken Joseph saying that he had made drawings for Tecolote in Luna's interior and that he expected the cafe to open there in May. Journal reporter Vince Kong also wrote that his efforts to reach the Tecolote owners for that story weren't met before deadline.
But Adkins says the Journal story "came back, bit us in the ass and we're getting kicked out." The potential Luna deal has since fallen through, she says, but a new Tecolote location may be in the works. Both Honnell and Kong didn't return SFR's phone calls Friday afternoon.
"We have a meeting this afternoon with another property owner. If it goes well, I guess we have a new location," she says.
Until then, Tecolote will be open in its current location through April 20. Adkins hopes the restaurant will be dark for only 60 to 90 days after that.
The developments are similar to Bobcat Bite, another famous Santa Fe restaurant that left its longtime location last May after disputes with the landlord. That restaurant reopened in the fall as Santa Fe Bite in a new downtown location.
With information from Enrique Limón.
