After more than four years, a new occupant is coming to the former site of a Jack in the Box restaurant at 564 Pearl St. in La Jolla.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With a planned opening in April, the El Pueblo Mexican restaurant is to join other locations in Del Mar, Cardiff, Carmel Valley and Carlsbad. The first of them opened in Cardiff in 2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re big on good food at a great price,\u201d said El Pueblo General Manager Nony Funes. \u201cThat is the core value. We want you to come in and have a really great meal and not break the bank.\u201d <\/p>\n
That philosophy has been at the heart of El Pueblo since it opened as a 600-square-foot shop offering 99-cent fish tacos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kept doing that for 10 years because it just took off,\u201d Funes said. \u201cThen we went up to $1.50 and there was a lot of backlash, so we went back to 99 cents and made a promise to our customers that we would only go [up] 10 cents every year.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, the fish tacos are available for $1.39 every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The property at 564 Pearl has been unoccupied since it was purchased by the adjacent Bishop\u2019s School<\/a> in September 2021 and the Jack in the Box abruptly closed<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n When the $5.5 million purchase was announced, Bishop\u2019s Head of School Ron Kim said the school\u2019s plan was to lease out the site in the short term and later convert it for student use. It currently is fenced off and used for school bus parking.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a great school and want to continue to be a great school, so this was about imagination and looking at our vision for how we can learn and grow better,\u201d Kim told the La Jolla Light at the time. \u201cWhenever we think about the future, we have the desire to expand what we can do. We want to make sure that space constraints aren\u2019t going to prevent us from doing something.\u201d<\/p>\n A deal with a prospective tenant fell through<\/a> in August 2022, causing the school to restart its search.<\/p>\n