The beloved Mexican restaurant closed its doors after 12 years due to high rents and declining sales.
By COLE SINANIAN | news@queensledger.com
ASTORIA — Valentine’s Day, one of the busiest of the year for restaurant workers, is no match for Marlene Guinchard.
The owner of Chela & Garnacha on 36th Ave does not miss a beat as she runs food from the kitchen, bartends, and greets the seemingly endless stream of eager young couples in the doorway vying for a table in the restaurant’s small, wood-paneled dining room.
“Seems like everybody came in at the same time,” she says to a man in a baseball cap named Alex Papaioannou, who’s seated over a plate of masa and potato-filled fried tortillas piled high with guacamole, crema and shredded chicken, a family recipe that Guinchard calls Intricadas (“intricate things”). Papaioannou’s wife, meanwhile, whispers to their young daughter in Spanish as the girl uses the table as a runway for her pink plastic airplane.
“The food is great, but also the ambiance, the charm,” said Papaioannou, a realtor from Flushing who’s been a loyal customer of Guinchard’s since the beginning. “I took my wife here before we were married. She’s probably stayed married to me an extra few years because of this place.”
But on this chilly February evening it’s not just love bringing Astorians out to Chela & Garnacha in droves. After 12 years, the beloved restaurant is saying goodbye. Valentine’s Day was the penultimate night of service. By the time this article runs, Guinchard will have shut the restaurant’s doors for good, with its last dinner service scheduled for Sunday, February 15. Her food will live on, however, at her taco truck, Casa Birria NYC, on the Upper East Side, and her upstate restaurant, Taco Turnpike, in Sloatsburg.
Chela & Garnacha’s closure comes amid an increasingly competitive property market and soaring commercial rents that have led to high business turnover in Astoria. Other recent closures include the iconic Neptune Diner, which closed in 2024 after 40 years, and pizzeria Porto Bello, which shut its doors after 26 years in 2025. Guinchard, who said she can no longer afford to pay rent after recent hikes, also attributes the closures to a market that never recovered from the pandemic, declining drinking rates, and young peoples’ unwillingness to dish out for beers and gourmet finger food.
“Right now, everything is dead,” Guinchard said. “New York City is dead. Before Covid this place was already dying, in the sense that there’s been so much gentrification in this area. It’s been so crazy.”
Marlene Guinchard with her long-time customer, Alex Papaioannou.
Guinchard admits the menu at Chela & Garnacha might confuse some gringos. On Valentine’s day, one young man could be heard attempting to order an IPA— no such thing can be found on her menu. Here it’s chelas only, Mexico City slang for an easy-drinking Mexican beer like Modelo, Tecate, Pacifico or Corona. The phrase “Chela & Garnacha” comes from the song “Chilanga Banda” by Mexican alt rock band Cafe Tacvba, and refers to the popular Mexican practice of drinking beers, snacking on decadent finger foods, and drinking some more.
Guinchard, who was born in Germany to a Mexican mother and Swiss father but spent much of her youth in Mexico City, says this tradition is best enjoyed with dishes like flautas, a fried, tightly rolled and stuffed tortilla; volcanes, a kind of crispy corn tortilla topped with gooey cheese, meat and avocado; and of course birria, a dish of marinated beef tacos dipped in a flavorful consommé broth that needs no further explanation in New York, where the once niche Jaliscan specialty (it’s traditionally made with goat) went viral in the early 2020s and has since conquered the city’s taco trucks. For a taste of Guinchard’s birria, head to Casa Birria NYC, currently parked at 86th St and 2nd Ave.
Her cebollitas, or fire-roasted green onions, are somewhat of a rarity stateside though ubiquitous in some parts of Mexico, where Guinchard explained that barbecues are incomplete without a pile of the sweet alliums charred and caramelized atop the grill. The intricadas, meanwhile, are the menu’s rarest item, as they are the literal invention of Guinchard’s mother-in-law. Much of the menu was developed by her ex-husband, Jorge, who grew up eating his mother’s delectable creations. One day, she fried masa tortillas stuffed with mashed potato for added heft, piled them with guacamole and cheese and fed them to her children, who were enamored, Guinchard explained.
“I love the people here, obviously,” Papaioannou said. “But the food— the intricadas…I’ve never found them anywhere else.”
Guinchard’s famous “intricadas.”
It was Guinchard’s son, Jordi Loaeza, who first moved to Astoria. He cut his teeth working as a cook under NYC celebrity chef Tom Colicchio (Gramercy Tavern, Craft) at his Kips Bay restaurant, Riverpark. It was Loaeza and his father who took the lead on Chela & Garnacha’s menu, Guinchard said, adapting the flavors from their family kitchen to New York tastes, while Guinchard led the business’s financial side.
They started in 2012 as a food truck called Mexico Blvd, though the goal was always to open a restaurant. A food truck was the best the family could do in the early years, as rents were steep and the commercial property market was highly competitive. Another issue was “key money,” or an added fee paid to the property’s prior tenants to expedite their departure. In Astoria, Guinchard said, these fees could top $70,000.
“With restaurants, anything that would pop up, that day it would disappear,” she said.
One day in 2014, the family got lucky; a hookah lounge on 36th Street was closing. They quickly signed the lease, handed over a comparatively modest $48,000 in key money, and began building by hand what was soon to become Chela & Garnacha.
But now, Loaeza has since moved to Vermont, leaving Guinchard in charge of the business. The property’s lease is ending and the new landlord who’s taking over wants to raise the rent. Not to mention, sales were already on the decline, Guinchard said, as the business never fully recovered from the pandemic. She also partially attributes the decline in sales to social factors. The neighborhood’s population turns over rapidly, she said, while commuters from New Jersey and Long Island aren’t coming into the city anymore now that they can work from home.
“New people come, they like our food, then they leave,” she said.
Guinchard is exploring options to reopen in a space nearby. In the meantime, loyal patrons can visit her at Casa Birria NYC, or take the train up to Sloatsburg to visit her restaurant, Taco Turnpike. Here, they’ll find many of the craveable “garnachas” Chela & Garnacha once offered. The intricadas, however, may be lost to history.
