Lynn Trimble
Audio By Carbonatix
The 16th Street home of acclaimed Valley restaurant Barrio Cafe has been quiet since chef Silvana Salcido Esparza shut it down at the end of May, 2024.
But now, new life is springing up in the famed Valley spot. James Beard Award-winning chef Rene Andrade, the mastermind behind the ever-popular Sonoran wood-fired hub Bacanora and its casual sister taco shop, Huarachis, is moving in.
Salcido Esparza was a champion of Mexican cuisine in Phoenix, blazing a trail for many exceptional chefs to follow. She served the community, both at her restaurant and beyond, for over 20 years.
When she closed her restaurant, she left big shoes to fill. Andrade, the 2024 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef Southwest, is just the person to step up to the plate, or rather, the grill.
VIVA PHX
And he’s followed in Salcido Esparza’s footsteps before.
Bacanora, his celebrated Grand Avenue spot makes its home in the historic Bragg’s Pie Factory. That space was previously home to Barrio Cafe Gran Reserva, an elevated offshoot of Salcido Esparza’s original Barrio Cafe.
Now, he’s leasing out the original. Andrade has filed a liquor license application with the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control for the space on 16th Street just south of Thomas Road.
After the news broke of Andrade taking over the iconic space, Salcido Esparza posted a statement to her social media pages, with an extended version on Facebook.
She opens by speaking of her lifelong commitment to championing ancestral knowledge, culture and creativity while working against structures based in racism and colonialism.
“This same commitment is at the heart of why I made the intentional decision to help open Chef Rene Adrade in the same building that once housed the beloved Tony and Marie’s Italian restaurant, and later became the iconic and my beloved, Barrio Cafe,” she wrote, in part.
“There was love in that space. There was faith from a little Italian nonna in that space. There was a kind of sacred passing of hands, of labor, of hope, and of cultural continuity. What was given to me in spirit, I now pass on. Una bendicion.
I have given my symbolic blessing to Chef Rene with intention. With Purpose.
Why Chef Rene? Because at the root of it all, he carries not only a birthright to cook his culture and his family’s generational foods, but also he has the heart of a cultural warrior. He is not an extractor. He is a defender. He is someone who understands that cooking our food is not a performance in order to commodify. In him, I see responsibility. It is lineage, pride and love. He gives back. He teaches and reaches behind himself while pulling the next generation forward, just as I have tried to do throughout my life.
You cannot appropriate your own culture.
That matters deeply to me. That’s why Chef Rene.”
How Andrade chooses to transform that blessing into his next restaurant remains to be seen. He’s not just opening a second location of one of his previous successful concepts. The chef is crafting a new restaurant called Lupe.
The outside of the former Barrio Cafe is, so far, relatively untouched. Other than the sign being removed, the bright blue paint and murals remain. The windows, however, are covered with brown paper as a transformation takes place inside.
The license application was received by the state on Feb. 10. There is no opening date yet announced for the new restaurant.
Lupe
2814 N. 16th St.
