{"id":196,"date":"2008-10-05T23:05:22","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T04:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=196"},"modified":"2016-05-04T00:29:25","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T04:29:25","slug":"el-chico-mexican-restaurant-bush-river-road-sept-2008-temporary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=196","title":{"rendered":"El Chico Mexican Restaurant, 1728 Bush River Road: Sept 2008 (closed for good)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Columbia has had trouble getting & keeping national brand Mexican restaurants. Garcias, Don Pablo's, and Cucos have all come and gone while Chevy's, Rio Bravo, On The Border and Chi-Chi's never made it here.<\/p>\n

El Chico<\/i> is the only one I can think of that has been here and stayed here, and I like it a good bit. I'll say, in fact, that once you add the crushed hot peppers, their salsa is the best in town, and chips & salsa are about 60% of what I grade a mexican meal on. (I also think that it's a very American story that an Indian family comes to America to open a restaurant -- a Mexican restaurant.)<\/p>\n

I was disappointed last week when I made it to that side of town just in time (I thought) to scoot in before closing, and found the place shuttered due to a fire. I called this week to see if they were back and was told that it will be until about the end of the month (I think I was quoted a date of 27 Oct) before they will be open again.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 7 Feb 09<\/b>: I should mention that El Chico<\/i> is now open again (and has been for a while).<\/p>\n

UPDATE 24 July 2010<\/b> -- Not a good sign: The hours have been cut to close at 9pm Sun-Thur and 10pm Fri\/Sat.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 4 January 2012<\/b> -- As mentioned in the comments, El Chico<\/i> has had another fire and is currently closed again. From the look-see I took just before Christmas, it does not seem to have been an especially bad fire, so I would not expect them to be closed for long:<\/p>\n

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UPDATE 14 March 2013<\/b> -- After a long while with no apparent activity, cleanup has started at El Chico<\/i>, so it appears that they definitely will<\/i> re-open:<\/p>\n

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UPDATE 18 September 2013<\/b> -- Still no sign of any rehabilition work at the place:<\/p>\n

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UPDATE 22 October 2013<\/b> -- As reported by several people, the end has come for El Chico<\/i> and they will not be reopening:<\/p>\n

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UPDATE 27 January 2016<\/b> -- It looks like we are finally getting near to an opening date for Persis Biryani Indo-Mexican Grill<\/i>:<\/p>\n

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UPDATE 4 May 2016<\/b> -- As mentioned in the comments, now open as Persis Biryani Indian Grill<\/i>:<\/p>\n

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Columbia has had trouble getting & keeping national brand Mexican restaurants. Garcias, Don Pablo's, and Cucos have all come and gone while Chevy's, Rio Bravo, On The Border and Chi-Chi's never made it here. El Chico is the only one I can think of that has been here and stayed here, and I like it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1707],"tags":[1941,210,447,229,83,3],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closing","tag-1728-bush-river-road","tag-bush-river-road","tag-fire","tag-i-20","tag-mexican","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}