SLO County cafe loses lease after 2 decades in business. Here’s what will replace it
When Nanyeli Mendoza closes the doors of the Cambria Café at noon Thursday, it will mark the end of an era.
She’s owned and operated the coffee shop at 2282 Main St., for two decades.
But George Ghazaly, who has owned the building and the liquor store next door for about seven years, did not renew Mendoza’s lease.
Rather than move her breakfast-and-lunch business to another location, Mendoza said in a phone interview, she sold it to Ghazaly.
Ghazaly said via phone that he plans to reopen the café as a restaurant serving Mediterranean food.
History of Cambria restaurant property
The property at the corner of Main and Bridge streets has a storied background interlinked with the history of Cambria itself.
According to a 1997 Cambria Historical Society report, property owners George Proctor and his partner George S. Davis had a blacksmith shop on the site about 1871.
“With the sale of the property to Proctor and Davis, it may be said that the ‘founding’ of Cambria had become a reality,” Geneva Hamiton wrote in her book “Where the Highway Ends.”
Proctor and Davis built a small hotel, which was destroyed in the so-called Great Fire of 1889 that ripped through much of the town’s commercial area.
Another blacksmith shop was built on the corner property after the fire. In the early 1890s, it was replaced by another hotel.
In 1937, fire consumed that building, which by then included a restaurant. Guiseppe “Joe” Reali and his silent partner Tony Williams bought the property and built a restaurant, bar and liquor store.
In 1958, Reali sold the building and business to Howie O’Daniels, former head coach of the Cal Poly football team.
According to the Cambria Historical Society, subsequent businesses on the site included a bank, Bob & Jan’s Liquor Store and a restaurant. Through the years, that eatery bore such names as Old Town Food Factory, Grandma Porte’s and the Cambria Café.
In 2012, another fire started in a storage shed behind the café and spread into a narrow gap between the outside walls of the eatery and Bob & Jan’s Liquor Store.
Luckily, a bar patron spotted the dinnertime fire very soon after it started, and firefighters declared the blaze to be out less than an hour later.
Why is owner closing Cambria Café?
Although business stayed good for the Cambria Café through the coronavirus pandemic, and all of her employees stuck with her, Mendoza said it was a tough year of hard work and family tragedy.
Her ex-husband, Nestor Mendoza, died from COVID-19 complications at age 51 in February.
While she’s sad to leave her customers, many of whom have become friends, Nanyeli Mendoza said she’s ready to retire after 20 years at the helm of a business she knew little about until she and her husband divorced.
“I knew I needed to make money,” she recalled, so she bought the café from her brother, Tio Mendoza, who’d had it for the previous five years.
As a restaurant owner and operator, Mendoza said, “All the time, you’re working, working and don’t take time to take care of yourself.”
“I never have time off,” she explained.
Now she’s focusing on self-care. Mendoza said she has some health problems that need to be addressed, and doctors have told her to cut back and not be on her feet so much.
Mendoza’s mother also has health issues, so she’ll be a caregiver, too.
The news that Cambria Café was closing inspired expressions of sadness from some in town.
Mel McColloch, president of the Cambria Chamber of Commerce, expressed surprise and dismay when he heard about Mendoza’s departure.
“I really like that old, homestyle feeling that she has in there,” McColloch said via phone.
“We had pretty much the same people every day,” she said. Now, she added, her loyal customers are telling her, “We won’t have anywhere else to go!”
Ghazaly said he hopes to open Cambria Café Mediterranean Cuisine by mid-August.
He said the new restaurant’s menu will likely include beef and chicken shawarma as well as kabobs, fattoush, tabouli, falafel and Mediterranean salad.
