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For a while, folks who dared duck past the truly gnarly 3-D mural at Berkeley’s La Peña Cultural Center would find a hidden gem of a restaurant – Los Cilantros, serving simple but satisfying Mexican fare like enchiladas and grilled-fish tacos. Then the pandemic came, and the restaurant shut its doors for the first time since 2014. Dilsa Lugo, the chef and owner, picked up shop and moved to a kiosk at the shared commercial kitchen of La Cocina Municipal Marketplace in San Francisco. Of course, things weren’t the same – but now they are, and aren’t, as Los Cilantros reopened last week after three years of closure with a revamped interior and new menu highlighting the chef’s hometown of Cuernavaca.
The food hall that opened in the spring of 2021 on a beleaguered corner of the Tenderloin, the La Cocina Municipal Marketplace, never succeeded in drawing in enough customers to justify the expense for private security and other costs. And now it is set to close on September 1.