Paco's Tacos will pour its last horchata and plate its last breakfast taco on Friday, August 21, closing the doors of its East Austin's Mueller neighborhood location for good after 16 years in business. The restaurant confirmed the closure on social media on Wednesday, telling loyal customers that the time has come to hang up its aprons.
The taco shop at 1304 E. 51st St. has invited guests to come by and share final meals with the restaurant team before the shutters close, according to MySA. In its announcement, the restaurant said it has many fabulous memories from its run on 51st Street, and Austinites have been flooding the comments with their own. One commenter using the handle coltonclamhands wrote that they still think about Paco's breakfast platter and habanero honey sauce, while another, cat_shattuck, said the restaurant felt like home after moving to Austin. A third commenter, samanthahoneybeelee, put it bluntly: Austin will not be the same without Paco's Tacos.
Behind the sentimental send-off is a straightforward real estate transaction. Commercial listing records show the 0.558-acre property containing the restaurant and an adjacent lot at 1306 E. 51st St. was placed on the market, with terms specifying the restaurant site must convey vacant and that the Paco's Tacos name be discontinued before closing, according to a Crexi listing. The 1,297-square-foot restaurant building includes two kitchens, a cantina with a full bar, and a live music stage, and the listing requires both 51st Street tracts to be sold together in a single transaction.
A Name Rooted in Family, Not a Founding Date
Paco's Tacos opened in 2010 and is named after Francisco Mercado Sanchez, who was born in northern Mexico and later relocated to what is today San Antonio, per MySA. The restaurant uses family recipes passed down across generations, and Francisco Mercado Sanchez and Cecelia opened their first restaurant together, according to the same account.
That lineage has led to some confusion over the years about the business's timeline. A November 2014 profile by Community Impact reported that co-founder Alan Baldree designed the restaurant building to resemble an 1812 Texas structure after reading Texas history books, converting a residential property he and his wife Margaret Baldree had owned for nearly 25 years before opening in 2010. That reporting clarifies that the 1812 reference tied to the business's history describes the building's early-19th-century Texas architectural style, not the founding date of an original eatery.
From a Six-Taco Menu to a Neighborhood Institution
When Paco's Tacos launched in 2010, its initial menu offered just six to eight taco options before customer demand pushed the owners to expand into all-day breakfast, lunch, dinner plates, and corporate catering, Community Impact reported. Neither owner had prior restaurant industry experience before opening the business. Over the years the menu grew to include breakfast and lunch tacos, taco plates, gorditas, tostadas, tortas, quesadillas and dinner plates, per MySA.
Signature dishes built the restaurant's following, including Paco's Pick, a grilled Angus steak plate with potatoes, poblano peppers, red peppers, and jack cheese, and the Big Man breakfast plate served open-face on a 10-inch flour tortilla, as detailed by EASTside Magazine and Grubhub menu listings. The restaurant also developed a proprietary blend tortilla, a hybrid of corn and flour meant to offer a middle ground between the two, alongside a salsa bar with seven house-made varieties. In December 2015, the Austin Chronicle featured Paco's Tacos in its guide to notable Austin taco destinations, highlighting its outdoor walk-up window and drinks like the black and white, made with half horchata and half cold brew.
Mueller's Growth Reshapes the Block
The neighborhood around Paco's Tacos looks very different than it did when the restaurant opened. Real estate demographic data cited in the Crexi listing recorded a 7.91% population growth rate within a one-mile radius of the property between 2020 and 2025, driven by new Mueller residential complexes like the Solomon, AMLI, and Aldrich 51, with average household incomes reaching $130,016. The property also carries GR-MU-V-CO-NP zoning, permitting high-density vertical mixed-use redevelopment, according to the listing documents.
The adjacent parcel at 1306 E. 51st St., a 728-square-foot office and house property, is currently leased on a month-to-month basis at $1,300 per month to Adaptive Communications, per the listing. As Mueller has transformed into a high-density, high-income urban hub, the underlying land value has made redevelopment increasingly attractive to buyers.
Part of a Wider Wave of Closures
Paco's Tacos joins a lengthening list of long-standing East and South Austin eateries shutting down in 2026 amid lease expirations and rising operating costs. Hoodline has reported on Taqueria Chapala's closure, set for September after 29 years, as well as the shutdowns of Little Mexico after nearly 40 years and Yard Bar after 11 years in May. Those closures, along with East 7th Street staple Koriente's exit after 21 years, point to a pattern of commercial rent increases, rising property taxes, and insurance spikes squeezing legacy Tex-Mex establishments across East Austin.
MySA reached out to Paco's Tacos for additional comments and said it will update its story if it receives a response. For now, the restaurant's message to its community remains simple: come by before August 21, and share one more meal before the aprons come off for good.
