República, the groundbreaking tasting menu restaurant specializing in Mexican culinary legacy and influences, will close in February, owner Angel Medina has confirmed. The restaurant was a James Beard Award semifinalist and, as our critic Jordan Michelman called it, “one of the best Mexican restaurants on the West Coast, with storytelling and history proudly brought to the fore.”

República first opened in November 2020 as a collaboration between Medina, pastry chef Olivia Bartruff, and chef Lauro Romero, previously of King Tide Fish & Shell. Medina operated a coffee shop in the lobby of the EcoTrust building, where he welcomed pop-ups, including Romero’s Clandestino. The original idea behind República was to serve guisados and masa snacks during the day, as well as pastes, a pastry from Romero’s native Hidalgo; then, in the evenings, the space would morph into a wine and dessert bar, with pastries by Bartruff and wine pairings highlighting Mexican- and Latinx-owned wineries, as well as BIPOC and women winemakers. “Lauro was a chef at a hotel and I hated it because he was so fucking talented,” Medina recalls. “He became my centerpiece for everything.”

Over time, República evolved. Romero began serving a more serious tasting menu in the evenings, often featuring inventive moles incorporating Oregon-grown produce, memelitas with house nixtamalized masa, and evocative dessert courses. One dish, a tri-colored quesadilla filled with quesillo and served with an earthy-nutty salsa macha, became an iconic course on the tasting menu. Servers delivered each dish with historical or personal context, talking about foodways and cultural influences. It served ingredients hard to find on other Mexican restaurant menus around Portland, including chicatanas (ants) and huitlacoche (corn smut). A particularly memorable dish reimagined rice and beans as a chanterelle risotto with house nixtamalized beans, a process typically reserved for corn to make masa. The restaurant consistently offered takes on aguachile, exploring Japan’s influence on Mexican cuisine. 

Portland Monthly named República its Restaurant of the Year in 2021. “Starting with a menu of homey comfort food dishes not often seen in Portland restaurants—tacos and quesadillas on handmade tortillas, tortas, soups, and guisados—the restaurant was based on a collaborative model where no single chef was the star,” former Portland Monthly food editor Katherine Chew Hamilton wrote in 2021, “and dishes from various regions of Mexico made an appearance in a show of ancestral pride.” The following year, República was one of Bon Appetit’s Best New Restaurants as well as a James Beard Award semifinalist.

Over time, República grew into a restaurant group, spanning cocktail lounge Comala, tasting menu restaurant Lilia Comedor, and now-closed projects like Matutina, Electrica Coffee, and De Noche. In 2023, República moved from the EcoTrust building to a sleek, low-lit dining room near Powell’s. A number of different chefs helmed this new kitchen, including Jose “Lalo” Camarena, of Metlapíl. 

After the election of President Donald Trump, Medina says business at República plummeted. “We felt it immediately,” he says. “We lost 30 percent of our business overnight. It forced us to make drastic changes.” He closed De Noche and moved its then–executive chef Dani Morales into the kitchen at República. It retained its tasting menu, but in 2025 it also began to offer à la carte options, like Pacific Northwest sturgeon in mole rosado and pork collar carnitas with turnip top salsa cruda. 

But it wasn’t enough, and Medina was getting increasingly fearful for his staff as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, began targeting restaurant workers around the country. Talking to friends in Minneapolis’s industry, where increased ICE activity has spurred ongoing protests and two civilians have been shot and killed by ICE agents, he heard horror stories—entire families going into hiding, restaurant owners who speak up being targeted by ICE agents. Medina began to worry about potential harassment, or pressure to release names of former or current employees. “We said, ‘Let’s make sure we protect the people we love the most,’” he says. “In a really end-of-the-world way, it goes back to Nazi Paris in the 1940s. Having to serve officers? Fuck that.”

In 2025, Portland Monthly included República on its list of the 25 Restaurants That Made Portland, which named the most influential Portland dining institutions of the last 25 years. “What was Mexican food in Portland before República?” Michelman wrote in that piece. “[No Portland restaurants] have pushed so hard to present Mexican cuisine in a fine-dining context and to bring delicacies and spectacular Mexican ingredients to the city like República.” 

While reflecting on the restaurant’s legacy, Medina often names former and current employees, who he says were integral to its success. “República has always been a place of developing talent,” Medina says. “All we did was create a space for these very curious and very eager people.”

The restaurant will serve its final meal on February 21, and is still open for reservations. Lilia Comedor and Comala will remain open.