Toronto Mexican restaurant chain quietly shuts down original location

A Toronto-based Mexican restaurant chain has quietly shuttered one of its busy downtown locations without notice.

It's been well over a decade since La Carnita first began whipping Toronto Mexican food fanatics into a tizzy with their elevated(-ish) takes on street food staples like elotes, tacos and churros — and, boy, did the fervor ever stick around.

Undoubtedly aided in the mid-2010s by co-founder Andrew Richmond's then-viral (or whatever the 2015 version of viral was) ice cream chain, Sweet Jesus, whose locations all either shared a space with or neighbored La Carnita locations, the Mexican joint was unstoppable for years.

Sweet Jesus has since closed down all of its downtown Toronto locations (though a few are still open in the GTA and elsewhere in Ontario), but La Carnita, for its part, has held strong.

Unfortunately for lovers of tacos, tequila, and all those other treats you've come to expect from the chain, their ranks have fallen by one, as La Carnita's original location in Little Italy has quietly closed down.

The first permanent location for the venture, La Carnita College, opened in 2012 and was an immediate hit, aiding the chain's expansion into the Entertainment District, Riverside, Midtown and even beyond Toronto's city limits with a location at Square One Mall in Mississauga.

No official statement was issued by the chain upon the closure of the location, but it has since disappeared from their website and locations highlight on Instagram.

On the bright side, though, all of La Carnita's other locations appear to be operating business as usual, and just in time for patio season.

At the time of publication, La Carnita has not responded to a request for comment on the reasons behind the closure.

La Carnita College was formerly located at 501 College Street.