Blue Front Cafe in Amarillo abruptly closes

The Blue Front Cafe along the Sixth Avenue alignment of Route 66 in Amarillo, Texas, closed its doors in January, according to two local media outlets.

KFDA-TV in Amarillo reported about a week ago about the Blue Front’s closure and a downtown restaurant, Acapulco Mexican Restaurant:

Down on 6th street and Jefferson the restaurant Blue Front Cafe also has signs on it saying that it is closed for good. The Blue Front Cafe opened at this location in 1983.
A lot of research and traveling across town didn’t shed light on exactly what has happened at these two restaurants and what the future holds for them, but we’ll continue to follow this story.

Melissa Bartlett for the Mix 94.1 radio station in Amarillo reported:

The other restaurant that has closed officially is the Blue Front Cafe (801 SW 6th). Now I didn’t even know they were still open. I had gone there several times years ago. Breakfast was always delicious. Then they changed ownership. They made a lot of changes to the menu. It wasn’t bad. It was just not the same. I went there once after the change. I think there downfall was that people just forgot about them. Google Maps does have them listed as “Permanently Closed.” Which again is sad. Another failed business and more employees out of work.

A Yelp reviewer gave a thumbs-up to the restaurant on Dec. 30, so the closure must have been recent.

The Blue Front Cafe had been put up for sale in 2015. Then-owner Bobbie McReynolds, 72, told the Amarillo Globe-News said it was time to retire. The newspaper dug up some history of the restaurant:

The cafe origins stem from a drugstore counter inside a store at Southwest Sixth and Adams Street, according to historical information former owner Betty Malson provided to the Panhandle Regional Planning Commission in the late 1980s.
That sandwich counter eventually evolved into the Blue Front Cafe. which moved to its current location in 1984, Malson wrote.
The restaurant closed after lunch at the old location on a Saturday and opened in its new location on a Monday, McReynolds recalled. “They did not miss a lick.”

According to at least one Internet site I found, the Blue Front Cafe dates to 1946.

(Hat tip to Karen Friemel Fangman; image of the Blue Front Cafe by Jack Malone via Facebook)

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