When Arturo Santa Cruz came to East Lansing in 1976, he had a dream of starting a restaurant and serving up food unlike anything else in the area — Mexican cuisine. Despite warnings from others that locals wouldn’t like the taste, Santa Cruz persevered. In 2016, his restaurant El Azteco is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
The restaurant originally opened on M.A.C Avenue in the basement under Campbell’s Smoke Shop. It became so popular that lines would go up and out the restaurant, El Azteco general manager Braxton Newman said.
“I was told you had to stand with your back against the wall as you were going down to let people leave, so it was very crowded,” Newman said.
After 10 years in the basement location, Santa Cruz said he moved his restaurant to the more spacious current location on Ann Street.
The new digs included El Azteco’s rooftop patio, ranked third in the state according to onlyinyourstate.com, an online state-by-state tourism guide.
“Arturo had a vision like no other,” current East Lansing El Azteco owner Paul Vlahakis said. “It was an architectural feat to do and it remains the only (restaurant rooftop patio) one in East Lansing.”
Santa Cruz sold the East Lansing location to Vlahakis four years ago.
Newman said the restaurant’s longevity is partly because of it’s deliberate timelessness, from the menu to some of the key staff.
“Our prep manager, Lupe, she’s been here for 39 years, so the food is literally prepped the same way it was prepped 39 years ago,” Newman said. “It’s supposed to taste like if you were a freshman in 1986 and got a burrito, you come back here, that burrito is going to taste the exact same.”
With 40 years behind it, El Azteco is looking toward the future.
Vlahakis said he and Santa Cruz are considering adding a basement level to the restaurant.
“We’re working on plans right now to present to the city and see if it’s something we can (get) them to approve,” he said. “When the (seasonal) rooftop patio closes, it’s nice to introduce the basement so we still have a bar or somewhere for people to wait, have a margarita while waiting to eat.”
This future development harkens back to the restaurant’s basement past.
“What we’d like to do is be able to touch back on those memories so that when people go downstairs they’ll get a memory of what they had,” Santa Cruz said. “It seems to be very important to a lot of those older customers.”
