In recent decades, it’s been out with the Spanish galleon ship-shaped restaurant and the A-frame Whataburger, and in with the more generic design. In San Antonio, one particularly illustrative example of the loss of whimsy is the disappearance of one sombrero-shaped Tex-Mex chain.
Sombrero Rosa, known for its sombrero-shaped roof with a round entryway serving as the hat brim, once had a few Alamo City locations. It’s hard to tell exactly when the first one opened, or when the chain even got its start, but locals remember it fondly. Well, not all locals, as a 1993 clipping from the Austin American-Statesman said some considered the Capital City’s “Pepto-Bismol pink” location the gaudiest business site in town.
Regardless, locals on the r/sanantonio subreddit had pretty good things to say, comparing the fare to Taco Cabana and reminiscing on “lots of eating and beer drinking on that patio back in the day.”
“The Las Palapas sign read ‘hats off to Sombrero Rosa’ when the one at West and Blanco came down,” one commenter on the thread wrote. Another said, “My dad used to take us to [Sombrero Rosa] for breakfast on Saturdays so that my mom could sleep in. Good memories.”
There were at least a handful of these restaurants across the city, and the remnants are easy to spot. Just look for a suspiciously round roof that looks like the brim of a sombrero, if the point of the hat were removed. One of these former locations is now Pasha, a Mediterranean grill, on the corner of Wurzbach and Bluemel Roads just off I-10 on San Antonio’s Northwest Side.
Another was converted to a quirky-looking Taco Cabana near Castle Hills after Taco Cabana acquired the chain in 1992. But even that didn’t last forever, as the Taco Cabana had been shuttered for a while and turned into a Black Rock Coffee. It just goes to show how changeable the restaurant industry can really be — one day, a chain takes over a city, and the next it’s gone.