El Cortijo Taqueria has served tacos and margaritas in the former Oasis Diner in Burlington since New Year’s Eve 2011. This June, it will close to make way for Burl’s Downtown Kitchenette, a new all-day concept from the Farmhouse Group.
“Burl’s is named after its host city and returns to its diner location roots,” Farmhouse Group owner Jed Davis told Seven Days by email. The new restaurant will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.
The morning menu will feature biscuits with sausage gravy, fried chicken and waffles, omelettes, eggs Benedict, breakfast sandwiches, and the Creekside breakfast with fried catfish and grits.
Lunch and dinner offerings include diner classics such as patty melts, tuna melts and house-smoked turkey sandwiches — both hot and cold — as well as dishes with Southern flair, such as house-smoked chicken and andouille gumbo, shrimp Louie, a chopped smoked-pork plate, and baskets of fried chicken from Adams Turkey Farm. Dessert will be homemade pies and puddings, Davis shared.
The Farmhouse Group — which also includes Pascolo Ristorante in Burlington, Guild Tavern in South Burlington, and two Chittenden County locations of the Farmhouse Tap & Grill — will hold on to the El Cortijo brand “for some future potential use,” Davis said.
The taqueria grew out of popular Taco Tuesdays in the early days of the Farmhouse Tap & Grill’s Burlington beer garden. It opened just up Bank Street to serve queso fundido, carnitas burritos, sweet potato-kale camote tacos and coconut margaritas in the Streamline Moderne art-deco diner car. A second El Cortijo location operated in Winooski from 2019 until 2021.
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“In addition to just wanting to do something new and exciting, there is naturally a business reason for this change,” Davis explained. “In its heyday, [El Cortijo] was a bar as much as anything. And, for a variety of reasons I suppose, later evening trends and wants in the downtown have simply changed in recent years.”
The diner car parked just off the Church Street Marketplace is one of more than 400 produced by the Mountain View Diners Company in New Jersey. The Lines family first opened it as the Oasis Diner in Burlington in 1954.
That business ran for more than half a century, hosting both vice president Walter Mondale and president Bill Clinton before it closed in 2007. It was then Sadie Katz Delicatessen for three years; the Farmhouse Group bought the building in 2011.
El Cortijo’s last day has yet to be announced but will likely be in early to mid-June, according to Davis. Burl’s, he added, will open “a few days after that.”
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