El Comedor restaurant is changing owners

The historic El Comedor de Anayas restaurant along Route 66 in Moriarty, N.M., famous for its neon rotosphere and New Mexican cuisine, will no longer be in the Anaya family for the first time in 60 years, reported the Albuquerque Journal.

Owner Mike Anaya, who also closed the nearby Mike’s Friendly Store a couple of years ago, said he’s inching closer to retirement. The restaurant will continue to run; Jesse and Olivia Stuard of Breezy Rain Cafe Inc. are leasing it.

Excerpts from the newspaper article capture a lot of the character and history of the place:

It has had its place on the map for politicians who knew the secret and not-so-secret stops on the campaign trail. Those politicians, from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton, are up on the wall. You can date the photographs as they go from the 1960s to the ’70s and ’80s and watch the neckties go from skinny to fat to fatter before finally settling on a reasonable width and staying there, for the most part.

El Comedor is a place where the tide of political events has been decided over cups of coffee, and standing testament to that are the autographed photos of politicians from state representatives to presidents.

You can find family snapshots from the 1980s, trophies from local sporting teams the Anayas have sponsored over the years. Most of these artifacts are neatly framed with captions on the glass. […]

“These could never be replaced,” Anaya said as he looked at one of several walls filled with framed photographs. “It was in this room that (Bill) Clinton announced his presidency.”

The neon rotosphere was restored about 10 years ago thanks to a Route 66 neon grant program in New Mexico. You can watch a documentary about the program on KNME-TV here.

Due to a complexity that makes it susceptible to breakdowns, it doesn’t always spin. But it’s still there.

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