Employees Of Popular Tyler Restaurant Locked Out Of Their Building

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I will say that I'm usually a pretty observant person. I notice some weird things and keep track of some even weirder things in my head while I'm driving around Tyler, Texas. Between the Christmas and New Year's holidays and burning up some vacation time within the past couple of weeks, I wasn't out as much and didn't observe this business closure until I went to lunch yesterday.

When you head out of the office for lunch nothing would suck worse than having a craving for a certain food and showing up expecting that mouth-watering craving to be satisfied and the restaurant be closed. That's exactly what happened at a Tyler Mexican food restaurant recently.

I was heading out to lunch and sitting at the intersection of Brookside Dr. and Loop 323 around 12:30 p.m. I happened to notice that the parking lot was empty across the street at El Mejicano Authentic Mexican Buffet. I mean, it's a Tuesday at lunchtime and that parking lot is usually packed with cars of people inside getting their fill of the Mexican buffet.

On my way back from my lunch I decided to pull into the empty lot to go see if there was a note on the door saying when the restaurant would re-open, thinking they were still closed for the holidays or something. What I saw taped on the door was very unexpected. There was a note from the landlord. The landlord has locked the tenant and all its employees out of the building.

Not a good way to start 2024.

The note stated the building had been secured by the landlord because the lease was delinquent and had not been paid up. The notes on the front door also stated that anyone attempting to enter the building would be prosecuted for trespassing.

Once back in the office, I looked El Mejicano up on Google, and their hours were updated to 'temporarily closed'.

It's sad to see this once-popular Mexican buffet closed down (for now).  There is no word on when or if it will reopen. It's always depressing when a business suddenly closes because it means that some East Texans have lost their jobs and that's no way to end a year or even start one off. Let's hope the owners of the business can get their financial affairs in order and reopen this once-popular buffet.