So Long, La Boca: Community Reacts to Cherished Middletown Restaurant’s Pause on Operations

On any night of the week, La Boca Mexican Restaurant & Cantina was once a bustling hub of Middletown residents and students alike. From the clatter of silverware over plates of authentic Mexican cuisine to the sounds of laughter that resonated throughout the restaurant during its regular trivia and karaoke nights, La Boca fostered a vibrant social scene for the community. 

However, after two decades of serving Middletown, La Boca is putting a pause on providing its services to the local community. Saturday, Feb. 28 marked La Boca’s final day of operations for the foreseeable future, as the restaurant is now closed for building renovations, according to La Boca’s official spokesperson Matt Lehet. 

“They’re going to do a total revamp of the building; that’s pretty much stripping everything down to the rafters and the beams and rebuilding it all out,” Lehet said. “And that’s going to be with apartments upstairs. In order for those apartments to work, there’s gonna be elevator shafts going in, power, water, 42 different units, and they’re gonna be totally revamped with both retail spaces downstairs, including the one next door.” 

La Boca will shut down while the new property owners, ES Goodman, a New England real estate development company, convert part of the building above the restaurant into modern residential and commercial spaces. Once the building’s renovations are complete, La Boca will reopen its doors and resume operations in its lower-level space. 

“I was told that after about a month being in here, working on the place, they’re gonna get a better idea how long it’s gonna take,” Lehet said. “At that point, they’re gonna reach out and touch base and give us a good idea when it’s gonna open. We plan on keeping everybody updated through our social media pages.” 

La Boca had been reliably functioning as a month-to-month tenant, and the announcement of the restaurant’s closure took both staff members and customers by surprise. Word of mouth about the temporary closure quickly began to circulate throughout Middletown as concerned citizens turned to social media for answers. 

On Tuesday, Feb. 24, Miles Craven ’27 attended La Boca’s weekly Tuesday trivia night when the upcoming closure was announced to those participating in the evening’s activities. 

“They announced their issues with the contract for the building after everyone had gotten in and sat down, before they usually start the trivia,” Craven wrote in a message to The Argus. “The room definitely went quiet for a second when they said it might be La Boca’s last trivia night, but the tone was still hopeful. The reason they gave was a contract dispute about a new apartment development that is being put into the building, but they didn’t give any specifics. They said they learned about it a few weeks before.”

Lehet further expressed his dissatisfaction with the disorganized and unclear closure announcement. 

“I personally didn’t find out until the 11th [of February], but they were trying to reach out for a while and were just unsuccessful with their attempts to reach ownership,” Lehet said. “There was a communication breakdown.”

Found at 337 Main St., La Boca has been a Middletown staple for decades. Wesleyan students have been frequent attendees at La Boca, particularly at the restaurant’s Tuesday Trivia evenings and Sunday Karaoke nights. 

Stephanie Ager ’26 was among the trivia night regulars who stopped by La Boca one final time immediately after learning of the closure news. 

“I was talking with my friends about how I wanted to go to La Boca for my birthday dinner this coming Sunday [March 1st] and one of them goes, ‘La Boca is closing,’” Ager wrote in a message to The Argus. “I didn’t believe her and just assumed she meant for the snow day on Monday [February 23rd], and then the next day all my friends started texting in our group chat saying it was permanently closing. Again, I didn’t believe them because I thought they were joking with me because they know how much I like it, so I decided to look it up and immediately saw an article talking about how they had 11 days to close. My friends and I then decided we had to go there for dinner that night, Thursday [February 26th], to enjoy it one last time.” 

Ager, who stayed at the University over the past summer, regularly took part in La Boca’s trivia night, describing the environment as a place for friends and the broader Middletown community to come together and enjoy themselves. 

“While I’m not able to go much during the school year, when I can, I really enjoy going to Trivia night,” Ager wrote. “Hanging with my friends, eating chips, and pretending to know the answers to the trivia (my friends always carry me through) are some of the best nights. I stayed at Wesleyan this summer and went to almost every trivia night; it was the night we looked forward to every week. It’s sad that both Wes students and the locals won’t have that anymore.” 

As someone with celiac disease, Ager also commented on how La Boca had a dedicated fryer for gluten-free food, a key benefit for individuals with gluten sensitivity who may have trouble dining at off-campus restaurants. 

La Boca is yet another social venue leaving the Middletown area and just one more example of a broader pattern of small-town enterprises shutting down, despite smaller new eateries like Parsley and MOTW Coffee and Pastries also recently opening up on Main Street. Earlier this semester, Metro Movies 12 closed after nearly three decades of screening movies, and in 2023, O’Rourke’s Diner closed its operations after 80 years of service on Main Street. 

La Boca employed around 20 staff members. Following the closure, various restaurants in the Middletown area contacted La Boca’s former staff and intend to employ many of them. 

“Since this has happened, local restaurants have reached out, and they’ve offered to take a lot of the staff on to where there really shouldn’t be much downtime,”  Lehet said. “I think we have a few folks who have been here working non-stop for the entire time we’ve been here. They might take a little bit of time off, but it looks like most of the people are willing to take them on until La Boca reopens, when the building’s ready for us.” 

Looking to the future, Lehet is optimistic about the restaurant’s return to Main Street, citing that its operations and refurbished venue will be improved following the renovations. 

“Customers in the community have been upset hearing that we’re going to leave,” Lehet said. “There was a lot of information going around the beginning. A lot of it did not end up being true, so people got pretty riled up about it. I think now, ultimately, the best takeaway is going to be that [if you] love the place, you’re going to love it even more when we get to reopen, because they’re going to give the building the love it deserves, and we’re going to come back into a nice new space with the same energy that we’ve always had here.” 

Maggie Smith can be reached at mssmith@wesleyan.edu