Before sudden closure, Chando’s Tacos rose from foodie favorite to Sacramento star
The closure of the three remaining locations of Chando’s Tacos on Tuesday marked an inauspicious turn — if not the end — for a Mexican food chain that rapidly expanded across and beyond the capital region but contracted in recent years.
Lisandro “Chando” Madrigal, who opened the original Old North Sacramento eatery in 2010 while still working on Apple’s corporate sales team, told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday the restaurants would be closed “for now.” He thanked his customers and suggested that something new was coming but declined to elaborate.
Before peaking at about a dozen taquerias, cantinas and food trucks around Sacramento and Atlanta, Madrigal’s empire of tortillas and meats began on an unassuming block of Arden Way in Old North Sacramento. Chando’s Tacos built a reputation for its high-quality food and affordable prices.
“Chando’s Tacos does one thing exceptionally well,” The Bee’s restaurant critic wrote in a 2011 review. “It cooks up the most flavorful meat you could possibly imagine and plops it down onto fresh tortillas.”
The reviewer added: “If Mozart made marinades instead of music, these would be his flavor notes.” And the deal offered by Madrigal and his wife, Karla, stood out. “You and a date could go into a food coma and still get change from $20,” a Bee follow-up review said a year later.
Bee columnist Marcos Bretón called Chando’s a “hole-in-the-wall wonder” and a “taqueria as good as any in old Mexico.”
The seventh of eight children, Madrigal was born in Yuba City and moved to Tijuana as a teenager, The Bee previously reported.
Two months after The Bee’s first review drew attention to the taqueria, Madrigal left Apple to focus on Chando’s, he later said. In 2012, he opened a second location on Power Inn Road in Elder Creek — which was among the three traditional spots open before Tuesday, along with another outpost at the company headquarters in West Sacramento.
By early 2016, Chando’s Tacos had three locations and 70 employees. Speaking to The Bee at the time, Madrigal touted his “scalable model” — with a West Sacramento hub for tortilla baking and other prep work — and floated expanding to the Bay Area.
The company did not do that, but Madrigal expanded in other ways, opening Chando’s Cantina in midtown in 2017 and an El Dorado Hills location of the sit-down restaurant in 2019.
Chando’s swelled to its biggest Sacramento-area footprint around the pandemic era. In September 2021, Chando’s emerged as the top pick for Sacramento tacos in a Bee poll.
The company then operated food trucks in Davis and Atlanta, an area of Georgia where Madrigal was planning two more brick-and-mortar locations. The Atlanta area taquerias opened in 2021 and 2023, but neither lasted long. They each shut down last year, according to local news outlets.
In 2023, Madrigal attributed his move to close a Citrus Heights location to “sales not being as peach as they once were.” He said he had closed the more upscale cantinas because he was “done with that type of business.”
As recently as August, after Chando’s closed an Elk Grove location, it maintained seven locations and three food trucks in the Sacramento region, according to past Bee reporting.
While running the business, Madrigal has not shied away from the spotlight.
He competed on the Food Network show “Chopped,” in a May 2021 episode called “Taco Brawl.” On the cable show, contestants made tacos for all three courses of a meal. The judges faulted Madrigal for making dessert tamales, a deviation from the theme.
“In the third round, I had already proven myself and done what I needed to do. I thought I was going to make good TV, good drama and pull the rabbit out of the hat and do something people weren’t expecting,” Madrigal told The Bee.
Chando’s Tacos previously operated locations in East Sacramento, Roseville, Fair Oaks and on the Sacramento State campus.
But he closed the last three Chando’s locations quietly, without any announcement. He appeared to have taken down the company’s Instagram and Facebook pages and its website. On Wednesday, the taquerias’ Instagram reappeared to announce the closures “ after many years of service and dedication.”
“This closure is due to economic factors and circumstances beyond our control that have deeply impacted the restaurant industry,” the post said. “We are truly grateful for the support of our team members, vendors, and above all, our loyal customers who helped make this dream possible.”
The post ended: “We take great pride in having represented Mexican culture through our food and service, and we carry with us the memories and love from so many years shared together.“
A planned news conference about the future of the enterprise planned for Monday has since been called off.
In February, the cantina announced plans to open a new restaurant, replacing Solomon’s at 730 K St. near Downtown Commons. The Chando’s Cantina social media pages and website were still active on Tuesday, and there were no updates on opening plans.
The upcoming Parkside Bar on K Street in downtown Sacramento is slated to serve dishes from a menu designed by Chando’s Tacos starting in September, The Bee reported Sunday.
The Bee’s Camila Pedrosa contribued to this story.
This story was originally published July 29, 2025 at 3:22 PM.
