‘One of SLO’s longtime institutions.’ This restaurant is for sale after nearly 50 years
A popular San Luis Obispo restaurant is for sale after nearly 50 years.
Pepe Delgado’s Mexican Restaurant closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, and hasn’t reopened since. The eatery at 1601 Monterey St. will go up for sale formally within the next couple of weeks, said Yvonne Poulsen, its sole proprietor since 1971.
“This was a really difficult decision,” said Poulsen, who is retiring. “There have been so many people that have enjoyed coming here. People will tell me they proposed to their wife in that booth over there, or they come back with their kids and tell me how they used to eat here all the time. The people have been so great.”
Pepe Delgado’s, which sports a mission-style exterior and a giant yellow sombrero sign, is one of San Luis Obispo’s longest continuously operating restaurants. It operated under the name Casa Monterey for eight years before Poulsen bought the business and renamed it.
Poulsen said she’s still working out the details of pricing the Pepe Delgado’s property.
“It could remain Pepe Delgado’s,” Poulsen said. “I hope it does. Or it could become something else. That will be for the new owner to decide. It has been very difficult to let go.”
Mexican restaurant is SLO institution
Poulsen, a native of Costa Rica, said she heard about the sale of Casa Monterey restaurant while she was living in Santa Barbara.
She decided to try her hand at the business, despite never having owned or operated a restaurant before.
Embracing Mexican food and culture, Poulsen drew upon south-of-the-border colors and imagery to decorate Pepe Delgado’s.
She added red-tiled floors, green-tiled tables and portraits of mustachioed rancheros, and used rustic wrought iron to separate building wings.
On trips to Tijuana, she collected items for display in the restaurant — such as large ornamental parrots perched in hoops dangling from the ceiling and building columns.
The restaurant’s walls sported handwritten messages in Spanish including “Panza Llena” (full belly), “Corazón Contento” (happy heart) and “Rincón de Amor” (corner of love).
A muralist from Hayward painted images from the early days of San Luis Obispo, including a woman on a horse in front of the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa in the 1700s. That mural was a favorite with Poulsen, who enjoyed riding horses.
Poulsen held down cooking duties at Pepe Delgado’s for the first 10 years, and learned other aspects of the business — such as staffing, finances and building-related duties — on the fly.
She said she got business advice from one restaurant regular: Madonna Inn owner, construction magnate and rancher Alex Madonna.
“I had to learn a lot of things,” said Poulsen said. “I made a lot of mistakes.”
Pepe Delgado’s popular with Cal Poly students, families
Family gatherings, banquets, bachelor parties and date nights were common events at Pepe Delgado’s, which drew customers from the community and the nearby Cal Poly campus. Poulsen recalled feeding the entire Mustangs football team.
Monterey Street hoteliers referred guests Poulsen’s way, and commuters along Highway 101 discovered the restaurant during their travels.
“I got to watch the Madonna family’s children grow up,” Poulsen said.
An avid golfer, Poulsen delighted in visits from professional golfers Freddy Couples and Loren Roberts, a San Luis Obispo native.
Menu favorites at Pepe Delgado’s included the restaurant’s sizable burritos, fajitas and margaritas.
Poulsen said the margaritas were made using a special recipe shared by a friend who operated a business in the Bay Area. Poulsen said her friend “figured he was far enough away, he could let me have it (without worrying about competition).”
A menu from the early 1970s offered tacos for 65 cents and enchiladas for $2.10.
Poulsen said she was a fairly hands-off boss, giving employees some space “as long as they were doing the job.”
“I was OK with that,” Poulsen said. “That was my style. I think that’s why some employees stayed a long time.”
One restaurant manager, Barbara Fleckenstein, worked at the eatery for 35 years.
When the restaurant closed in March, Poulsen was employing 22 people. Telling her employees about her plans to close Pepe Delgado’s “was hard and I will miss them,” Poulsen said.
“I was hoping to be able to make it to 50 years in business,” she said said. “We were almost there.”
Customers react to news of business sale
After learning of the restaurant’s looming sale, some longtime customers commented on social media with their memories of frequenting the eatery over the decades.
“I have been going here for at least 30 years,” Joel James wrote on Facebook. “You can never go wrong eating here. The food is always fresh, atmosphere is brilliant, drinks are good and cold. If I ever had a complaint about this place, I would never tell anyone because I love it so much.”
Another customer wrote on Facebook that he’d dined at the establishment since the 1970s.
“From when I was a child growing up in the ’70s with my family, to modern times with my fiancee during the last decade,” C. Chad Hoffman wrote. “The ambiance and decor did not really change. The food was always wonderful. I always liked the velvet paintings on the wall, especially the bandito smoking a cigarette with a patch over his eye.”
Another commenter, Denise Johnson-Brofman, called Pepe Delgado’s “one of SLO’s longtime institutions.”
“Oh no!” Johnson-Brofman said in response to news of the restaurant’s sale. “It was always a stop when we visit the coast.”
Clint Pearce, president of Madonna Enterprises, told The Tribune that his wife, Connie Pearce, used to ride her pony over to the restaurant for chips and salsa while growing up in San Luis Obispo.
“I really do hope someone takes it over and keeps it Pepe Delgado’s,” Pearce said. “It has been a fun place for us to go.”
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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