Centerville seeing boom in Mexican restaurants
Centerville emerged this week as the epicenter of a surge of Mexican-restaurant activity. The city is now home to at least six full-service Mexican restaurants, with one more on the way. And a handful of Mexican restaurants are operating just outside Centerville’s city limits.
The surge hasn’t gone unnoticed in Centerville city offices, where some staffers have talked about organizing a Mexican restaurant crawl similar to a pub crawl.
There were two significant developments this week. Rancheros Cocina Mexicana in the Cross Pointe Centre opened its doors Monday, and El Toro Mexican Bar and Grill confirmed plans to open a new restaurant in the Centerville Square Shopping Center at 894 S. Main St. in south Centerville without closing any of its other locations, including one in nearby Bellbrook and another on Ohio 725 just west of Centerville.
In addition, workers are constructing a large new La Pinata Mexican Restaurant at 9505 Dayton-Lebanon Pike (Ohio 48) and Sheehan Road. When that restaurant opens, the La Pinata Mexican Food restaurant that is located in a retail center a couple of blocks to the north will shut down.
The new Rancheros Cocina Mexicana restaurant in Cross Pointe has a connection to El Rancho Grande but is a new concept to the Dayton area. The new eatery fills space that has not had a full-time tenant in nearly three years, previously housing Nonnie Waller’s Parlor, which shut its doors in October 2015. The restaurant seats about 180, employs 14 and is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week.
El Toro District Manager Enqrique Alvarez, district manager for El Toro, told this news outlet this week that the new south Centerville restaurant could open as early as November in space that previously housed Buffalo Wings & Rings. It will employ 30 to 35 people, and will become El Toro’s 13th restaurant.
Elsa’s has a long-standing Mexican restaurant on Far Hills Avenue near Centerville’s northern border, and the new Elsa’s Corner Cantina in the Sugarcreek Plaza off Wilmington Pike is a few hundred feet from Centerville’s eastern border.
Chiapas Mexican Grill at 298 N. Main St. (Ohio 48) and Las Piramides Mexican Restaurant at 101 W. Franklin St. in downtown Centerville round out the half-dozen existing sit-down-dining, southof-the-border-themed restaurants in Centerville.