Celebrated (And Disliked) Cantina 1910 In Andersonville Is Closed

By Anthony Todd in Food on Aug 22, 2016 12:19PM

The back dining room. Photo by Anthony Todd.

It's been something of a rough ride for Cantina 1910, the farm-to-table Modern Mexican spot in Andersonville. It boasted an incredible space and a great menu, but lost its opening chef early, faced heavy criticism on Yelp and suffered from service problems. However, after a recent positive review from the Tribune, we hoped that it would manage to rise above its early troubles. Apparently not.

We received word from the restaurant late last night that they were closing, effective immediately.

We want to thank everyone who has joined us at Cantina 1910 over the past year. Like any restaurant, we’ve had our ups and downs, but through it all our team has remained fully committed to serving sustainable, local ingredients through modern culinary techniques. It is with heavy hearts that we announce the closing of Cantina 1910 and Café 1910 effective immediately.

This closing is a bit of a blow for the southern portion of Andersonville, which was stretching neighborhood development down Clark Street, towards Lawrence Avenue and into Uptown.

The owners of Cantina 1910 attributed the closing to high labor costs, increasing wages and a shortage of restaurant workers.

"In the last two years, we have seen a 27 percent increase in the base minimum wage, a 60 percent increase in kitchen wages, and a national shortage of skilled culinary workers."

During our visits, we've rarely encountered a full dining room at the huge restaurant, and we've had some fairly awful service experiences. But we've also had consistently excellent food and cocktails, and the loss of Cantina 1910 is a disappointing closing for lovers of elevated Mexican food in Chicago.