Restaurant Mexico in Tempe Is for Sale — and They're Tossing in the Recipes

A longtime Mill Avenue favorite is on the market.

An employee at Restaurant Mexico in Tempe confirmed Friday afternoon that the restaurant is for sale. We found the listing on a web site called bizbuysell.com.

Titled "Downtown Tempe Mexican Restaurant," the listing says that the spot for sale "is on a busy street and located close enough to the ASU Campus to bring that potential extra growth. It’s been in business for many, many years seeking new ownership. The new owner could add delivery, open the patio and advertise to bring in more traffic. The restaurant is 1900 square feet with seating for approx 60 inside with the opportunity to utilize the back outside secluded patio to seat additional guests. With the #12 liquor license you could expand your beverage menu to fill the patio.

"The food is excellent and has great reviews. Offering delicious sopas, quesadillas, enchiladas, empanadas, burritos, tacos, tostadas, flautas, chimichangas and more. This is a perfect business for a new operator to step in and take the recipes and the business to the next level, by adding their own personal touch."

Not everyone's into Restaurant Mexico, but it's definitely got a cult following, and the president of the fan club has got to be humor writer Laurie Notaro, who attended ASU and tries to eat at Restaurant Mexico every time she's home from Oregon (where she relocated years ago).

"I've spent the last 30 years eating Mexican food around the Valley, and I've eaten at all of the old places, the standard places, the places that people have been shot in front of an hour after I left, and sure, the gringo places," she wrote in Phoenix New Times in 2012. "Restaurant Mexico stands alone. You'll know it as soon as you have your first Clare burro, chicken mole, or the sopes ... RM has never strayed from its dependable menu of queso fresco-topped dishes, homemade tortillas, fresh beans, honest salsa, and just-out-of the fryer chips that have always come in the same size in the same bowl for the last 25 years. Guess what? If you ask the girls nicely, they'll bring you more."