The end of 2019 is bringing a small ripple of restaurant closures with one big thing in common — large spaces on Capitol Hill.

When owner Edgar Pelayo first told CHS about his plans for Añejo Restaurant and Tequila Bar in the former home of Dilettante on Broadway, he summed the situation up.

“It’s large — which translates to expensive.”

A year and a half from its April 2018 opening, Añejo quietly shuttered this week at the corner of Broadway and E Mercer just a block from the new north Broadway home of the Seattle Consulate of Mexico.

There is apparently something else already lined up to take its place.

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In a message posted on the shuttered 3,000-square-foot restaurant’s windows and doors, Pelayo thanked his customers and said he had sold the restaurant to focus on his Viva Mexico restaurant in White Center. The message, you might have noticed, also promised half off Añejo’s tequila and mezcal. Sorry you missed the closing party.

It’s not clear what will come next for the space after Pelayo’s sale of his lease. Tenancy in the space is a little more complicated than most. The Brix’s status as a condominium building extends to its commercial spaces. In the case of Añejo, the space was purchased by Chinese real estate investors registered to a Shanghai address in a $1.3 million 2017 transaction. Any tenant taking over the space will have a subordinated lease relationship with the ownership’s bank.

The former owner of the space had been a part of Broadway for four decades. Dilettante’s parent company purchased the unit for $1.2 million in 2007, according to King County records, and opened its Dilettante Mocha Café in the space. In 2017, the company announced it would be exiting the street. The business started in 1976 with a cafe called simply “The Dilettante” in the 400 block of Broadway E.

Añejo’s exit follows news that another larger than average Capitol Hill venue, Pike/Pine’s Stout, will close Friday after five years of business in the preservation incentive-boosted Sunset Electric building. Meanwhile on Broadway, Capitol Hill Tex-Mex bar and grill Rooster’s pulled up stakes late this summer with word something new would be moving in. The space remains empty. Elsewhere, the north end of the Broadway food and drink core is busy with activity with the opening of Altura sibling Carrello, new owners at Lionhead, work underway to reopen the old Broadway Grill space as Olmstead, a new sibling to nearby Witness, and work starting soon on a new “self pour” beer and wine cafe in the former Roy Street Coffee space.

As for tequila on the street, don’t forget that Broadway La Cocina is now La Cocina y Cantina.

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