Every January, beloved Cerrillos Road New Mexican restaurant Café Castro (2811 Cerrillos Road, (505) 473-5800) closes for the month of January to conduct a deep clean. This closure dates back for what feels like eons, to the ’90s, when original owners Julia and Carlos Castro first opened the eatery on Rodeo Road. Today, in late February, Café Castro has been closed for nearly a month longer than usual, which has sent a sort of panicked ripple effect through the local community.
Let’s first answer a few questions about that: Is Café Castro closed right now? Yes. Is it permanent? No. When will they reopen? Hopefully, this April. What’s with the extra-long closure? Well, that’s a little more complicated.
Dave Cathey
Let’s go back to 1990, when Julia and Carlos left long-timejobs at Tomasita’s to purchase El Comal from a woman named Dorothy (whose last name seems to have been lost to the annals of history). The Castros would run El Comal until 1994, when they opened a second location on Rodeo Road—one that still bore the El Comal name. Eventually, they would sell the original restaurant (it’s still there, though, and excellent) and rebrand their second spot as Café Castro—which would ultimately move to the Cerrillos Road location we all know and love some years later.
First, Alma Castro scaled back her involvement with the business when she was elected a City Councilor in 2023; though her husband still works there, and she is still committed to the nuts and bolts and worker well-being. Still, she is not officially its owner any longer—in fact, no one will be the singular owner moving forward.
“No one is going to be in charge alone, and decisions will have to be made with all 13 members of the co-op,” says Edna Ruth Castro, Alma’s aunt and a longtime Café Castro employee.
“The point is that everyone will learn everything,” Hernández adds. “Everyone will be fluent in front-of-house and back-of-house.”
“And it’s a mix,” Alma interjects. “We have some folks…who are interested in knowing in the future how they could be part of the collective, and there are also folks who worked at Castro for many years and have chosen to go home.”
This meant whittling down the staff from roughly 20 workers to 13—for now, anyway. To become a member of the Castro Collectivo, employees must have a minimum of two years working at the restaurant, plus be willing to make a $5,000 buy-in—though they can offset some or all of that cost in exchange for work hours.
Night manager Katia Monge agrees.
“It’s an opportunity we have to benefit our families and our community,” she says. “It’s something that can give us a lot.”
But the road has not been easy. Though similar to a union in some ways, Café Collectivo doesn’t actually have a perfect analog in the local restaurant world. A handful of microbreweries, pizza joints and other eateries around the country have adopted similar models, but in New Mexico, we don’t exactly have collectively run restaurants on every corner. Hernández says resources like The Cooperative Catalyst of NM and the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives proved invaluable in finding their way, but between preparing the employees, navigating a sea of paperwork and permitting and the good old-fashioned struggle of running a restaurant, the timeline has been hard to nail down. He and Alma say they’re hopeful for an April re-open date, but there are still a lot of day-to-day concerns to address. Even so, patrons can expect very little change once Café Castro reopens. The signage won’t change, nor will the menu. You might notice a group of people who feel a little more energized while toiling. Take Daniel Castro (no relation as far as Alma knows), a four-year Café Castro vet who tells SFR the collective, “can be an example for other people—or other companies that are interested in a new model.”
Joy Godfrey
Joy Godfrey
Joy Godfrey
And what a new model. At the risk of editorializing (or just straight-up editorializing), Café Collectivo seems like a glorious new starting point within an industry that almost always quashes the soul of the little guy. Here we have an insanely popular restaurant that caters mostly to locals. Some patrons, Ruth says, have been coming in on the same days for decades. The workers get to know them over time—they come to care for each other. Of course, that doesn’t make the temporary closure any easier. According to Alma and Hernández, not a day goes by without a handful of worried voicemail, a nonplussed visitor or an otherwise concerned would-be diner.
“We’d like to tell them we’re very thankful for the love they’re giving us every day,” Leon says. “We’re working to try and open as quickly as possible and to return to the closeness we have in seeing [regulars] every day. Maybe today we can’t give them a specific date, but we’re thinking of them and doing everything we can to open soon.”
So yeah, you’ll have to wait just a little longer for those killer enchiladas or that perfect breakfast burrito (and the green chile cheeseburger is no joke, either), but it will be worth it to know that the company is taking care of its own and working as one. If you drive by Café Castro right now, you might notice its marquee bears an apt phrase: “Stronger Together,” it reads. And these people really mean it.
