Reno Magazine
UPDATED: Santa Fe Basque restaurant closes for good after 70 years in downtown Reno
Johnathan L. Wright | Reno Gazette Journal
UPDATE: This story has been updated as of 11:46 a.m. July 14, 2020, to include comments below from co-owner Dennis Banks.
And another piece of Old Reno passes into eternity.
Santa Fe Basque restaurant, part of the Santa Fe Hotel in downtown Reno, served its last iceberg salad with fries, its final bowl of oxtail braised in red wine, its farewell Picon punch when it closed permanently on July 11 after the dinner service.
The North Lake Street restaurant, which debuted in 1949, confirmed the closing on its Facebook page, saying "thank you to everyone who has supported us the last 71 years."
Commenters returned the love.
"We are so sorry to see you go!," wrote Tracy Bacon Pieters. "Santa Fe has been a very important part of our family history for years. Sending our blessings."
There is no Santa Fe without a bar; it's part of the mystique," said co-owner Dennis Banks, who has had to shut down his front bar again pursuant to Gov. Steve Sisolak's latest directives to slow the coronavirus.
With the drop in bar business, the lack of downtown events, the falloff in business lunches because people are working from home, and the need to limit parties to six or fewer (thus idling some of the communal tables, a Basque signature), it no longer made financial sense, Banks said, to keep the Santa Fe open.
Restaurant only re-opened in July 2019
There have been two Santa Fe Hotels on North Lake Street. The first version, built sometime in the 1920s or 1930s, Banks told @RGJTaste in 2019, burned to the ground, later being rebuilt as the Santa Fe we know today.
The Esain-Zubillaga family purchased the Santa Fe in the late 1940s. In 1998, a family disagreement led to the closing of the restaurant; it would remain shuttered for nearly two years.
In July 2017, Banks purchased the Santa Fe Hotel from Phil Zubillaga, a son of the family, who was moving to the East Coast.
The restaurant closed for renovations for two years, reopening in July 2019 with new wiring, plumbing, heating and cooling systems, and kitchen equipment; new furniture; better bathrooms; and Basque flags and lithographs disinterred from the basement, then framed and hung.
There were even, for the first time, non-communal tables where smaller parties could sit if they chose to.
The menu still offered the classic all-inclusive Basque dinner — soup, salad, beans, fries, main course, dessert — but the standards were now joined by newcomers like mango shrimp salad or salmon fish tacos or a chipotle chicken quesadilla.
With its door shutting, the Santa Fe now ranks among several other prominent Reno restaurants that have closed permanently during the coronavirus pandemic, including Luciano's and 4th St. Bistro.
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Johnathan L. Wright is the food and drink editor of RGJ Media, part of the USA Today Network. Join @RGJTaste on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.