When I moved to Houston in March of 2015, I never thought about how exquisite the Tex-Mex restaurant business was. I have deep Mexican roots, so the food I grew up with was not the food I was introduced here in Houston. My boyfriend, who was trying to play it cool at the time before we started to date, asked if I ever tried Tex-Mex before. I told him I preferred the other kind (the “authentic” kind), but I didn’t mind trying the Texas version of Mexican food.

That is where he introduced me to Café Adobe, located at the Marq*E Entertainment Center off I-10 and I-610.

It was an elegant restaurant, probably one of the most elegant restaurants I’ve been in so far. The servers overloaded you with chips and two types of salsa: one mild and one spicy. They don’t ask you if you want water, instead, they serve you water instead; which is great because when I tried the spicy salsa it tasted like a guy in a jalapeno costume kicked my tongue so hard.

My boyfriend recommended me to try their margaritas. Drinking? On the first date? Their menu stated that they had “best margaritas in Houston”, and they were also award-winning. So I gave one a try. There goes my one-drink limit.

They were pretty good! It wasn’t too strong, or tarty. Definitely award-winning, for sure.

Now to the main dishes. I ordered the “Pollo Fantastico”, a dish that had grilled chicken breast stuffed with Monterey Jack cheese and steamed spinach. It came with rice and beans of your choice. Their tortillas were fresh made in-house, which is my favorite type of tortilla whether flour or corn.

My boyfriend’s favorite dish was the chimichanga. Let me tell you that it looked nothing like the ones you microwave for two minutes. It was a giant chimichanga. Deadpool would get a kick out of it.

The place was special to my boyfriend because it was convenient to HCC during his time (graduated in 2015). It was also the family favorite where they hosted birthday dinners and other gatherings. Since that first date, we would come back here. Valentine’s Day, Birthdays, Anniversaries, we wanted to relive that special date we had.

We actually had plans to return to Café Adobe for Valentine’s Day this year. One day while I was at work, I wanted to call the restaurant to see if they were taking reservations.

One Google search led me to one article I did not want to see: “Cafe Adobe Closes All Locations”.

“Why???” was my reaction. Google only gave me limited results. The only source I could find was Reddit’s r/Houston page. The users were saying different things, from “injury lawsuit” to “bad service”, to “Owner decided to sell out the restaurant”. To make all matters worse, they have been closed since October of 2018.

Further searching led me to a Southeast Texas Record article about a customer slipping and falling off the stairs at Café Adobe’s Sugar Land location. That article was days old, which led me to the fact that this, plus the recent bad reviews on their social media pages, were reasons why they were shut down.

According to another article by Swampost.com, the property will be replaced by an Irish pub.

We were able to compromise a plan B for Valentine’s Day this year. However, knowing that Café Adobe no longer exists gives me that hollow feeling that nothing would replace it. I’ve tried other Tex-Mex restaurants before, but that one was special; no matter how much I criticized the size of their tamales.

May you rest in peace, Café Adobe. You were loved too much, no matter what people tell you.