SLO County tapas restaurant is closing its doors — but an old favorite will replace it

A an upscale Pismo Beach eatery is closing its doors later this month — but a local classic is replacing it.

La Bodega Tapas , which opened in April 2018 under the ownership of first-time restaurateurs Teresa Cordeiro and John McCartney, will close its doors on Friday, Oct. 25, Cordeiro said.

Cordeiro said complications with McCartney’s health in recent months have forced the partners to reconsider their long-term options in Pismo Beach.

“I’m going to hibernate for a little tiny bit,” Cordeiro said. “That’s I think what I need to do — I just need to slow down a little bit, and once our health gets a little bit better, we’ll refocus and figure out where we’re going to be.”

With their retirement approaching, Cordeiro and McCartney said they were pleasantly surprised to find a successor who can use their space to its full potential in Mark Adam, a former owner of Shell Beach restaurant Alex Bar-B-Q.

“The restaurant has done extremely well,” Cordeiro said. “We attracted the locals who love something very different and are willing to step out of their comfort zone and experience some foods that are really global in nature.”

Why La Bodega closing?

Once La Bodega serves its last meals at its 790 Price St. location — a bank building complete with a vault that was converted by Cordeiro and McCartney — possession of the property will turn over to Adam.

Until then, Cordeiro and McCartney will continue doing what they do best: creating unique, internationally inspired small plate meals, Cordeiro said.

Cordeiro said she’ll miss making the restaurant’s “Texas-sized” Spanish tapas, which drew influence from South American, African, Asian and Lebanese cooking from time to time.

She said she was proud to have survived the start of the COVID-19 pandemic just two years into operation, and said she was grateful to her local patrons for consistently supporting the business.

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“If it hadn’t been for our locals, we wouldn’t be alive,” Cordeiro said. “Our locals supported us during COVID — our locals came faithfully every week, once or twice a week, to get takeout.”

Making such unique food required plenty of upgrades to the former bank building. The interior features a dining room with an open kitchen and bar, along with a wood-burning oven installed by the La Bodega owners, she said.

On the second level, bar seating and private event space overlook the dining area, with views from the top window stretching over Pismo Beach down to the ocean.

“It was just four walls — that’s all it was,” Cordeiro said. “It had no water downstairs and no bathrooms downstairs, and had no kitchen. The walk-in is the safe.”

Alex Bar-B-Q making a comeback in a new home

The upscale setting of La Bodega is a far cry from the shabbier building Alex Bar-B-Q inhabited until its closure in 2014 at 853 Shell Beach Road in Shell Beach, Adam said.

Adam owned Alex Bar-B-Q between 2003 and 2012 and left the business to partners who were supposed to facilitate the sale of the old property, which was the home of the restaurant since 1942.

In 2018, the original Alex Bar-B-Q building was demolished by Kain Building and Design Group without the city of Pismo Beach’s approval after the building’s owner sold it to Compass Health. Kain Building did not have the city’s permission to fully demolish the building — only part of it — but mostly razed the site to the ground, sparking local outrage.

Compass in turn sold the property to Bucky ‘n’ Bean LLC in 2020 with the intention to redevelop the site into a two-story mixed-use commercial and residential development, but these redevelopments have not progressed since then.

“(Compass) asked for forgiveness instead of permission, but that didn’t work out so well for them because that property is in the coastal zone, and you can’t tear something down and say, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I’m sorry — I’ll just rebuild it the way I said I was going to do it in the first place,’” Adam said. “Everybody along the coast of California that’s got seawalls would do the same thing.”

Adam said he trademarked the Alex Bar-B-Q brand in 2019 and has been looking for a new home ever since.

While La Bodega actually may be too nice of a setting for the barbecue restaurant, Adam said the property checked the right boxes because it’s far enough away from residential areas to be open late.

“The old Alex’s was a dive,” Adam said. “I’ve had several people say, ‘Oh my gosh, you know that Bodega building is too nice to be Alex’s.’”

The new Alex Bar-B-Q will cater to locals and tourists, and should create a casual enough atmosphere and low enough price point for a family and their children to eat there, Adam said.

Adam said he’s retained the original recipes from Alex’s old ownership but expects some updates and experimentation with the menu.

He said he plans to keep the brick oven installed by La Bodega and will look for more opportunities to use it going forward. He’ll also need to install an oak pit for the barbecue and will likely reorganize the upper and lower floors to add a bar upstairs and larger dining space downstairs.

What’s next for Alex Bar-B-Q?

Plans to reopen the local barbecue restaurant are still in their infancy, and an opening date has not been set yet, Adam said.

Adam will start the remodel soon and will look to hire most of the Spyglass Inn Restaurant staff — another restaurant that recently announced its closure — in the coming months.

“We can’t really be Alex Bar-B-Q without a barbecue,” Adam said. “The plans will actually be submitted to the city today, so I don’t know how long that whole permitting process takes. However long it takes us to transition La Bodega into Alex’s, I hope it doesn’t take very long.”

La Bodega’s last day will be Friday, Oct. 25, and it will be open to all, Cordeiro said.

“We welcome all the oldies and the newies to come,” Cordeiro said. “We really would love to share with them our success.”

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