Picos only had a few hours left.
But at 7 p.m. on the last, sweaty Sunday in August, the 42-year-old Upper Kirby Mexican restaurant still felt alive. Customers filled nearly all 240 seats in the dining room. Chefs tossed blazing pans; waiters ferried out fajitas on still-sizzling plates. Regulars thronged around the bar as bartenders rattled Cointreau and tequila in neon shakers.
Picos’ last night at Richmond and Kirby, on Aug. 30.
Picos’ last night at Richmond and Kirby, on Aug. 30.
Amid the chaos, customers made the pilgrimage to snap selfies and shake hands with owner Arnaldo Richards, who stood tall in his black chef coat, white hair brushed back.
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Picos owner Arnaldo Richards reflects as he sits with friends and family on the last day of the restaurant’s Kirby location in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Picos owner Arnaldo Richards talks to customers at the Kirby restaurant during its last service in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Picos server Hector Torres prepares a to-go dish at the restaurant in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Fajitas sizzle on the server’s tray at Picos in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Fajitas sizzle right out of the kitchen at Picos in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
An empty Tequila Room at Picos at the end of the night for the restaurant in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Picos owner Arnaldo Richards talks with staff after the last dish was served in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Picos owner Arnaldo Richards, center, laughs with friends and employees after the restaurant’s last service in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
A staff member boxes up menus and items on the hostess stand at Picos in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Picos employees work to remove a large decorative vase out of the building after the restaurant’s last service in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Picos co-owner Janice Richards, center, hugs staff after the restaurant’s last service in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Empty margarita shakers collect on a table at Picos in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Picos owner Arnaldo Richards shakes hands with a regular in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Picos bartender Victor Gutierrez makes margaritas during the restaurant’s last service in Houston on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
“End of an era,” one woman told him. Arnaldo nodded. He knew.
That night, Picos would shut down.
THE INITIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Picos, a trailblazer in regional Mexican cuisine, will close after four decades in Houston
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Arnaldo and his wife, Janice, put a lifetime into Picos. They opened the restaurant in 1984, setting out to popularize Mexican food at a time when many Houstonians only knew Tex-Mex. And for the past year, they’ve been trying to say goodbye.
Arnaldo, 68, announced the closure last August. Then he delayed it, changed his mind and changed it again. For 42 years, Picos had given him a world to run and a place at its center. He was used to making the decisions, greeting the regulars, commanding the kitchen and being recognized wherever he went. Giving it up meant losing more than a business.
Each time he flip-flopped, he confronted the same painful question that many restaurateurs ask as they fight to stay open: What do you do when a restaurant that holds decades of stories and generations of regulars no longer makes enough money to keep going?
Arnaldo’s answer: Keep trying. Even on Picos’ last night on Kirby and Richmond, customers and waiters swapped rumors about a new location.
NEW BEGINNINGS: Exclusive: Picos, 42-year-old Mexican restaurant that closed in August, just reopened. Here’s where.
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In the end, after all the farewells, Arnaldo reopened Picos in a 191-seat space on Westheimer, just two miles away.
‘All this legacy’
The year 2025 hit Houston’s restaurants hard.
High food costs, difficulty hiring, tariffs, less drinking, lower foot traffic, rising rent and a saturated market: All contributed to what some owners called their worst year on record. Community institutions and well-known names shut down by the month.
Behind the scenes, yet more restaurateurs — Arnaldo among them — had to choose whether to keep fighting. It hadn’t been an easy few years. Arnaldo’s brother and “right-hand man” Alex died of cancer in 2024. At the same time, Picos ran into revenue problems. Arnaldo said business slipped 18% the first half of 2025 compared to the year prior.
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He didn’t want to retire; he still ran the restaurant with such vigor he joked “my employees think I do cocaine.” But he looked at the numbers and decided Picos had to close.
Left: A bartender pours drinks. Right: Victor Gutierrez rings up a customer.
Top: A bartender pours drinks. Bottom: Victor Gutierrez rings up a customer.
In his announcement, he emphasized being proud. He said he’d popularized shaker margaritas, poured tableside from pink-green-orange containers. He’d succeeded in his mission to share real Mexican food. He kept his emotions zippered; in interviews over the next year, Arnaldo rarely used words like “sad” to describe how he felt.
He sometimes sounded uncertain, though.
“If we close the restaurant, we don’t relocate, what are we gonna eat?” Arnaldo recalled telling Janice. “I’m not gonna be able to make all these things just for the two of us, because I only cook for 100.”
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Customers, too, sounded lost. As soon as Arnaldo declared Picos would close, they washed in, ready to tell him about how they’d held wedding rehearsals or gotten engaged there, how they’d sent their children off to college with one more meal under Picos’ sepia lights.
Bob McBrinn and Sheila Valley-McBrinn, longtime barflies, rushed to their corner seats at the bar. Another family, whose 9-year-old daughter celebrated every birthday there, asked if the restaurant could postpone its closure. The dad said he’d bring his company work party to the restaurant that December.
A bartender shakes up a drink at Picos in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Basking in the support, Arnaldo wavered. He told the dad: “Just go book it.”
He pushed the closure past the holidays, giving customers one last tamales season and one last Christmas Eve. Giving himself time to ponder the “next chapter” for himself and for the Picos name: a book? Catering?
“All this legacy that we had created,” Arnaldo said in October, “it’s important to maintain.”
Building Picos
Arnaldo likes to say he’s put 55 years into the restaurant industry, starting around age 14. That’s when his mom began taking him to the family’s restaurant in Monterrey, Mexico. He rolled flautas all morning, then sold them with sauce in little bags on the side.
“It really taught me how to work,” he said.
He carried that ethic with him, into his restaurant management studies at the University of Houston, into business with Janice and a friend at the restaurant El Granero, and finally into a restaurant of his own.
Arnaldo and Janice signed a lease at 5941 Bellaire Blvd. in late 1983 and set to work decorating with jubilant color: turquoise chairs, red tablecloths. A palapa roof shaded the bar; another covered the patio. Copper birds hung around a fountain, and once it opened, children would toss in coins to make a wish.
A photo of Arnaldo and Janice Richards, taken in 1985, hangs on the wall at Picos in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Arnaldo created a menu of dishes that were then difficult to find in Houston: moles, seafood. He had to import massive sacks of chiles from Mexico because he couldn’t get them here.
Janice sketched a toucan with a massive beak for the logo. In its honor, they christened the new restaurant with the Spanish word for “beak”: Pico’s. (They dropped the apostrophe later.)
On March 8, 1984, they opened the doors.
A year later, a Houston Chronicle review of their restaurant declared, “If you’re both diligent and lucky in the restaurant reviewing biz, about four or five times a year you’ll come across a real find.” Lines lengthened. Arnaldo worked back-of-house, and Janice worked front, and they juggled long days with parenthood.
Left: The fountain at the original Picos. Right: Arnaldo’s daughter Monica Richards de Osberg, then a child, at Picos.
Top: The fountain at the original Picos. Bottom: Arnaldo’s daughter Monica Richards de Osberg, then a child, at Picos.
The kitchen became a daycare for their three daughters, the dining room a playground. Regulars like Bob and Sheila began stopping by; along with waiters and bartenders and chefs, they turned into honorary aunts and uncles.
When Arnaldo’s eldest, Monica, grew up, Bob and Sheila attended her wedding in Jalisco. Every Christmas, the couple brings holiday cookies — chocolate-orange, an eggnog log — to the Picos family. They give an extra box to Angelica, the youngest sister; they joke that she’s the favorite.
The Richards “treated us better than guests,” Bob said. “They’ve treated us like family.”
Growing pains
On Picos’ 30th anniversary in 2014, Bob and Sheila gathered under the bar’s thatched roof, posing for pictures behind a row of the margarita shakers that had become Arnaldo’s calling card. Then the Richards family shut down the restaurant. They moved the fountain with coins into a warehouse, and bagged up the pennies to keep.
“We didn’t want to throw the wishes away,” Janice said.
The Bellaire location needed major repairs. And Arnaldo thought Picos had outgrown the hole-in-the-wall space. He’d expanded briefly to a second location and then a third in the 1990s, but highway construction forced both to close. This time, he wanted to bet big.
THE MOVE: Pico’s Mex-Mex makes the big move to Upper Kirby District
He, Janice and Monica re-launched Picos in a space more than double the size of the first. At the intersection of Richmond and Kirby, more upscale and less colorful, it spanned a dining room, two spaces that could become private rooms, a bar and two patios. Private liquor lockers lined the “tequila room.” Accolades hung on the walls. Arnaldo wanted the restaurant to turn over five or six times on the weekends to make a profit.
Picos on Kirby had its last service in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
“Back in 2014 when we started, this restaurant was packed,” Arnaldo said.
Mariachi music bounced off the cavernous ceilings. Warm yellow light gave the whole restaurant an old-timey cast, a feel of history that complemented Arnaldo’s stories about the good old days.
Remember when former Gov. Mark White walked in, and Janice made him wait? he’d reminisce. Remember when Picos mixed hundreds of gallons of Cointreau and Grand Marnier in a tanker truck as Arnaldo vied for the Guinness World Records’ largest margarita?
At its peak, Arnaldo said the restaurant reached above $7 million a year in sales. His sister Claudia ran Picos’ brisk catering side. Then the pandemic hit.
He determined that no matter what, Picos would stay afloat. Diners couldn’t come in? He’d set up a proprietary to-go system with Monica. Don’t want to use third-party drivers? Waiters could start delivering. Customers called to ask if they could get avocados or tomatoes, so staff started packing produce for people to purchase with their enchiladas. Arnaldo donated masks to hospitals and police.
Even with those efforts, business never fully rebounded to pre-pandemic highs.
“After COVID,” Arnaldo said, “people don’t go out.”
Flip-flop
Five years later, that trend hadn’t changed at Picos. With closure looming in early 2026, the restaurant geared up for its final December tamale season.
Alongside a few others, Maria Romero piled chicken smothered in chile verde atop masa in the back of Picos’ kitchen. A few quick folds with a banana leaf, and the tamale joined her growing pile. By the end of the day, the staff would roll hundreds. By the end of the season, Picos would sell several thousand.
Left: Maria Romero rolls tamales. Right: Delia Perez prepares for more.
Top: Maria Romero rolls tamales. Bottom: Delia Perez prepares for more.
Even so, Arnaldo sounded dissatisfied. Picos always did well in December, between tamale sales, holiday parties, its annual celebration of moles and Christmas Eve. But he wanted more. He kept thinking about the post-closing-announcement spree of customers, who surged in for a month. After that?
“They just forgot about it again,” he said.
Giving up Picos, though, would mean losing even more: Saying goodbye to the customers who did come out. Laying off waiters who’d followed Arnaldo for two or three decades.
Owner Arnaldo Richards cooks in the kitchen at Picos restaurant as the longtime Houston institution prepares for its final tamale season before closing, in Houston, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Monica, who once worked by Arnaldo’s side, had left Picos to focus on her floral business, but Angelica now ran brand engagement. Arnaldo wanted her to inherit the restaurant. And he decided that if he downsized, he could bring in enough diners to make Picos sustainable once more.
In January, newly chipper, he announced to the Chronicle that instead of closing, Picos would relocate.
“I’m thinking about my family. I’m thinking about myself. I’m thinking about my employees,” Arnaldo said, explaining his decision. “Because once we relocate, we going to stay open as long as we can.”
Empty seats
Arnaldo zeroed in on a new lease. He pitched the restaurant as a botanero serving shareable plates, ideal for the Ozempic-era eater. An architect mapped out a vision. Arnaldo prepared to finalize arrangements with the new landlord.
Then the deal fell through. Arnaldo’s current landlord sold the building on Kirby, so Picos would have to leave around the end of August. And sales still hadn’t recovered.
“If I had the support of the community, I would be here until I was 100 years old,” Arnaldo said in April. “But I don’t want to sit here in my restaurant and look at all the empty seats and say, ‘Hey, you know, let’s go on. Let’s open another restaurant.’”
Customers eat inside Picos restaurant during the holiday tamale season as the longtime Houston favorite continues service ahead of its planned closure, in Houston, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Was he doing it wrong? he wondered. He hadn’t neglected Picos; he wasn’t a “wild man” or a “drug addict” or a “drunk.” He’d put funds into the restaurant instead of retirement, and now he didn’t have as much saved as he’d like, and he felt like he’d given enough.
He no longer knew if he wanted to relocate. He didn’t want customers to express their appreciation only when Picos was on the brink of shutting down.
Houston was home to millions, enough to fill Picos thousands of times over. But that week in mid-April, Arnaldo said, “it’s been probably the worst weekend that we have had.”
Letting go?
Picos opened at 8 a.m. on Aug. 30, closing day. The team bustled to present the restaurant’s last Sunday brunch: prime rib glowing under red light, hot chocolate simmering in a copper pot. Arnaldo, though, was already thinking of new beginnings.
He’d changed his mind again. This time, he planned to reopen at 3736 Westheimer Rd., where Cyclone Anaya’s Tex-Mex Kitchen would close later that week. The “hand of God,” Arnaldo said, had led him there just in time.
He’d announce the good news later.
Today, he’d say goodbye.
The dinnertime rush on Picos’ last night, Aug. 30.
The dinnertime rush on Picos’ last night, Aug. 30.
Customers mobbed him for selfies. Bob and Sheila claimed their corner seats at the bar, crowded in by friends they’d made at Picos over the years. Joe Hutchins ribbed them, recounting stories from Monica’s wedding: Bob wore a kilt. Joe joked that he was the king of Scotland, and ever since, Joe’s called Bob El Rey.
Behind them, Monica pointed out the spot where her husband proposed to her. A few chairs down, Jesse Hernandez and Robyn Wheaton reminisced about their first lunch dates at Picos.
Without the restaurant, Jesse said, “We’re lost. We’re lost. We’re lost.”
The dining room filled and emptied, filled and then, by 8:30 p.m., began to empty again. Soon, the kitchen would churn out its last meals: crawfish enchiladas, parilla mixta and shrimp en brochette.
Picos owners Arnaldo and Janice Richards leave after the restaurant’s last night on Kirby in Houston, in the early hours of Monday, Aug. 31, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
The bar would mix drinks past midnight. Waiters would carry out the hostess stand. Janice would dance. Arnaldo would announce, “OK! Everyone! We’re leaving!” as he pulled his fingers down his face in a joking imitation of tears.
He and Janice would drive away. And they’d get to work setting up their next act on Westheimer, where the doors opened two weeks later.
For now, though, they still had a party to wrap up. Arnaldo escaped to the patio, easing himself into a chair. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, passed it to a friend.
“I need a break,” he said. He’d been at this all day. He’d been at this for 42 years.
Picos owner Arnaldo Richards, left, hugs long-time server Ruben Mendoza after the restaurant’s last service in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
But this was his show, and he couldn’t leave before curtain call. Diners who trickled toward their cars paused when they spotted his curling white hair. Above the music pulsing out from Picos, they called to him:
