A highly-regarded Mexican restaurant has closed: Hugo's Invitados, which had been wowing crowds at its Las Colinas location 5240 N. O'Connor Blvd. #160 since 2018, closed in mid-May.

According to spokesperson Matt Whiteley, the lockout came as a surprise. The restaurant issued a statement which said that "we find ourselves unexpectedly closed," before apologizing for the "incredible inconvenience."

"We assure you, this was not our decision. We were in the midst of ongoing negotiations with property ownership, when the proprietors elected, without warning, to suddenly and fully terminate the terms of our lease," their statement said.

Hugo's first opened as a partnership between entrepreneur Mark Hulme and restaurateur Hugo Miranda (Meso Maya), with an ambitious and well-executed menu of chef-driven Mexican food with dishes such as Wagyu carne asada, Mexican cioppino, and scallops with huitlacoche & corn couli. Margaritas were made with organic ingredients, and everything on the menu was gluten-free.

They went on to open a Tex-Mex spinoff Hugo's Lost Colony in 2021, followed by the debut of a fresh taqueria called Honest Taco in Dallas' West Village in 2022. (They also had plans to open a second Hugo's in Uptown Dallas in the McKinney & Olive luxury tower but that plan got scuttled; they went on to open a Hugo's in the West Village in 2023.)

Their momentum got derailed due to a string of unfortunate circumstances — including Miranda contracting COVID in 2020, as well as a change at the West Village, where restaurateur Mike Karns took over as majority owner and promptly installed his own concepts in the Honest Taco space: first Mexican Test Kitchen, a pop-up, which he replaced with UnaVida, now reportedly closed.

But the original Hugo's at Las Colinas still had a loyal and consistent following, and had also become a destination for gluten-free diners, Whiteley says.

"That location was still doing very well," he says. "We had regulars from the neighborhood as well as customers who came from outside the area, and we also had the same staff who were with us from day one, who cared deeply and who get all the credit for the quality and service."

They hadn't lagged significantly on rent and were anticipating a brisk Mother's Day weekend with full reservations; alas, the new-ish landlord, a company called Water Street O'Connor LP, abruptly locked the space the Thursday before.

"It would have been a special weekend for our customers as well as for our 70-plus employees, whose livelihoods depended on this small business," Whiteley says.

It's an unfortunate ending for a restaurant that could have been a run-of-the-mill Tex-Mex but was instead something much better, and Whiteley says that, at this point, as much as they'd like to revive it, the likelihood that it will resurface is slim.