Chef Jose Luis Medrano, left, and his wife, Aide Monico, work the kitchen Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023, at Chimu’s Tacos food truck in Pendleton. Chimu is the nickname for Monico, for which the family-run food truck business is named.

PENDLETON — El Charrito, a popular Mexican restaurant in Pendleton, has closed.

Reggie and Carmen Amaral, 74, of Pendleton, owners of the establishment at 212 S.W. Dorion Ave., were unavailable for comment. Fellow local restaurateur Joe Meda of Joe’s Fiesta Grill and Cantina, 322 S. Main St., said he believes the Amarals were ready to retire.

“It has nothing to do with the economy,” Meda said. “It’s fatigue. After 31 years selling tacos, they were ready to hang it up. It wasn’t a lack of interest.”

Before opening El Charrito in 1999, the Amarals lived in Molalla. The Pendleton restaurant quickly became popular with Oregon Army National Guard aviators from the then new flight facility at Eastern Oregon Regional Airport. It developed a regular clientele.

Martina Lopez, staffer at Mazatlan Mexican Restaurant, 1408 S.W. Court Ave., said during a busy lunchtime the Amarals are selling the premises of El Charrito.

Until a reopening, the growing number of food trucks in Pendleton could help take up any slack in the Mexican cuisine market. Chimu’s Tacos, on the corner of Southwest 12th Street and Frazer Avenue, has been in business for four years. Nico’s Tacos, 337 S.W. Emigrant Ave., and Panchito Tacos, 1304 S.W. Dorion Ave., are spin offs of Joe’s Fiesta.

Meda said he was happy to help his former cooks go out on their own.

“Everyone has his own crowd,” he said. “Mazatlan attracts tourists. Downtown businesses have struggled, but we have regular local customers. Everyone who comes into the restaurant is my brother.”

Though Joe’s had just opened at 11 a.m., a well-known local couple entered. Meda greeted them by name.

Mazatlan, like Panchito, benefits from proximity to the Round-Up Grounds but also the convention center. R & G Holdings LLC of McMinnville owns Mazatlan. The company has two contacts on record, Jamie Ramirez and Jesus Galvan of Western Oregon.

Then of course there is the local franchised Taco Bell. Some American restaurants in Pendleton also serve Mexican cuisine. Freedom Cafe and Bakery, 611 S.W. Dorion Ave., and Sarah’s Sweet & Savory, 1703 S.E. Court Ave., are each new to the local dining out scene and offer breakfast burritos, for instance.

Chimu’s is from owner Jose Medrano’s wife Aide Monico’s nickname. The face on their logo is their now 13 year-old daughter’s, who helps make the trailer’s popular burritos and other menu items. The couple has five daughters.

Chimu’s greeted about 40 customers for lunch in June, when a bus carrying farm workers from Mexico to fields in Washington stopped for a meal. Medrano’s location allows him to rent a lot of space for covered tables at a reasonable rate. It’s a family operation. Besides his daughter, Medrano’s mother, brother and wife work in the business to various extents.

Despite January weather, the Medranos still had customers. However, the lunch hour line was longer at Panchito, with a better location on the other side of the tracks. Among Chimu’s lunch customers on Wednesday, Jan. 10, was the crew of a Ford F-350 from Texas.

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“The cost of chicken went up more than five times in a few months,” Meda said. “We can’t raise prices as fast as our suppliers can.”

Meda said he is grateful for the support he has received from the community. He came to Pendleton from Southern California more than 20 years ago. There he supervised 60 employees of a circuit board assembly company with defense contracts.

“My boss ordered me to cut our crew in half,” Meda said. “I quit. My sister had a restaurant in La Grande. She said I should move here. I didn’t want to rent. Restaurants were dropping like flies. We bought this building without looking at it and piled the kids in a U-Haul.”

Meda and his family tore out the carpet and painted the building in bright colors. Then City Manager Larry Lehman stopped by.

“He was with a cowboy,” Meda said. “He told me the colors didn’t go with downtown. You can imagine my reaction. Later, when I went into city hall for a liquor permit, there he was. I told him I didn’t know he was city manager and hoped he wouldn’t hold my reaction against me.”

Meda grew up poor in East Los Angeles.

“I have a seventh grade education,” he said. “You need the hunger to survive.”