Less than three months after rebranding, a promising seafood restaurant is now closed. El Fish Demon at 1604 Fredericksburg Rd. in the Deco District announced the sudden move in a July 7 social media statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now permanently closed,\u201d wrote the business on Instagram. \u201cThank you, everyone, for the opportunity to feed you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alejandro Paredes, who skyrocketed to national acclaim with Carnitas Lonja, first opened<\/a> the concept as Tacopolis in July 2025, serving tacos and quesadillas stuffed with pollo, chorizo, carne asada, birria, chuleta, or champi\u00f1\u00f3n.<\/p>\n In April, the chef admitted that the taqueria idea was not \u201creally working\u201d and switched gears<\/a> to open El Fish Demon in the same space, offering Gulf mariscos. The main culprit was the price of meat, which was unsustainable with the low prices at the Deco District restaurant.<\/p>\n The closing was not a complete surprise. In January, Tacopolis held a “Make Rent” event<\/a> to help recoup profits lost by ICE patrols on the street and weather-related foot traffic drops.<\/p>\n Before opening Tacopolis, Paredes had largely been out of the public eye since December 2023, when he made the shocking decision<\/a> to close Carnitas Lonja and sibling restaurant Fish Lonja. Both were widely considered among San Antonio\u2019s best restaurants, earning accolades from the James Beard Foundation<\/a>, Esquire magazine<\/a>, Eater<\/a>, and the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although Tacopolis did not receive as much national press, Texas Monthly<\/a> did call it \u201cdefinably our new favorite.\u201d CultureMap echoed that sentiment, naming it a contender for our annual Tastemaker Awards Best New Restaurant tournament<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear what drove the decision to close, although the lack of a big dining room might have played a factor in San Antonio\u2019s sweltering summer. A request for more information was not immediately returned. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than three months after rebranding, a promising seafood restaurant is now closed. El Fish Demon at 1604…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":919407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,22790,325300,77861,7202,7203,20958,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-919406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-america","tag-closings","tag-deco-district","tag-mariscos","tag-san-antonio","tag-sanantonio","tag-seafood","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116880778869511894","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/919407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}