{"id":261350,"date":"2026-04-22T16:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/261350\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T16:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:37:08","slug":"houston-restaurant-pioneer-to-close-longtime-location","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/261350\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston restaurant pioneer to close longtime location"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a bit of a back and forth with\u00a0Arnaldo Richards’ Picos since its titular owner announced it was closing<\/a> nearly a year ago. Timelines have shifted for the longtime Houston restaurant at 3601 Kirby Dr., but Tuesday afternoon, Richards announced<\/a> his Mexican restaurant’s final day is in fact coming. It’ll be\u00a0Aug. 30.<\/p>\n

“After months of exploring every option to keep the Picos’ legacy moving forward, we now face the fact that a group planning to build a high-rise has acquired the property,” Richards said in a statement. “… Our goal has always been to continue Picos’ legacy in Houston. While this chapter is ending, we are actively searching for a new home and remain hopeful about Picos’ future in Houston.”<\/p>\n

Richards insisted in his statement this is not a farewell for\u00a0Picos, but a transition. He and his team are busy working to secure the next location for the restaurant. “Our goal was to move seamlessly to a new space without interruption; however, that timeline depends on securing and remodeling the right location,” he said.<\/p>\n

The impending closing of Picos first came to light in August 2025 in an announcement by Richards. A month later, he said\u00a0he would push back\u00a0Picos’ closing date in an effort to help his staff<\/a> ahead of the holiday season. The restaurant then remained open through the end of 2025. In January, Richards revealed the restaurant, instead of closing, would relocate to an undetermined location<\/a>. What wasn’t said was how long the Kirby restaurant would continue operating.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of longtime restaurants around Houston, but not many have had the sort of historical cache that Picos has carried<\/a> since it first opened in 1984 in the Bellaire neighborhood (12 years ago it\u00a0moved to the current Kirby Drive address). While it does do Tex-Mex, Richards’ restaurant has often been credited as a being a culinary ambassador for regional Mexican cooking. Similar restaurants<\/a>\u00a0have opened over the years, but Picos was one of the first movers of the genre, at least in Houston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s been a bit of a back and forth with\u00a0Arnaldo Richards’ Picos since its titular owner announced it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1703,1704,56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-261350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-chronfood","9":"tag-chronstaff","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-headlines","12":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}