Mexican restaurant leaves Kirkwood after 15 years

IU students and locals will no longer be able to eat burritos as big as their heads\nin Bloomington.\nLa Bamba, a Mexican restaurant located at 520 E. Kirkwood Ave., officially closed its doors on Feb. 4, said Jean Shaffer, a representative from the human resources office at the La Bamba chain’s headquarters in Champaign, Ill.\nThe restaurant closed after its lease ran out, said Ramiro Aquas, co-founder of the 25-restaurant chain.\nRamiro Aguas and his brother, co-founder Antonio Aguas, are now looking for a new location within the Bloomington area where the restaurant could relocate. \nRamiro Aguas said he wants someone to buy a franchise of Bloomington’s La Bamba. Until that happens, another restaurant will not open in the Bloomington area, Ramiro \nAguas said. \nAccording to its Web site, the chain is currently not a franchise but it could be if a buyer were interested. A franchise is a license granted by a company to an individual to market its products or services in a \nspecific place.\nOut of the 25 locations, Bloomington was the only one that was closed down, Aguas said.\nThe closing meant La Bamba’s seven workers were left without jobs, Ramiro Aguas said. La Bamba fed the late–night bar crowd for 15 years before its closing, he said. \nSophomore Marissa Artman said she is sad to see it close.\n“Truthfully, it wasn’t the best Mexican place,” Artman said. “But it was good because there are very few Mexican restaurants (in the area).”\nArtman also said she will miss the friendliness and small business atmosphere the restaurant offered.\nAccording to the company’s Web site, the idea of the restaurant came to the brothers while they were in Champaign, Ill. They were upset at the lack of options for Mexican cuisine and decided to change that.\nThe brothers soon opened up a restaurant in Champaign, and later expanded to other college towns such as Bloomington and West Lafayette, Ind. Ramiro Aguas said he hopes this is not the end of La Bamba \nin Bloomington.\n“(I want to) thank a lot of the customers,” he said. “Maybe (there will be) a new one in the area.”