For 92 years, Las Cuatro Milpas bucked the odds. Petra and Natividad Estudillo opened the restaurant on Logan Avenue in 1933, serving simple plates of comfort food like rice, beans, tacos, burritos, and the best tortillas in town. It’s hardly changed a bit since then—it’s still cash-only, the lard-laden beans are last meal-worthy delicious, and there’s always a daily line of hungry patrons snaking around the block.
But soon, the tortilla press will close for the last time and the Estudillo family will hand over the keys to someone else. As of this week, the property is officially for sale.
Real estate broker Voltaire Lepe says he’s been working with the family to help them explore their exit options for “quite some time.” When San Diego Magazine spoke to Sofia Estudillo (Petra and Natividad’s granddaughter) last year, she estimated the restaurant was near the end of its lifespan. The next generation of descendants have other careers, and her and her sister Margarita, who owns the restaurant, are getting too old to keep running it. Lepe says they’ve been ready to retire, “but they just didn’t know how to go about it.”…