A restaurant specializing in ambitious Mexican cuisine will serve its last customers nearly one year to the day after it opened on Johns Island.
Colectivo, owned by Alex Yellan and Chad and Holly Dennis, will permanently close after dinner service Aug. 31. The decision to shutter was a financial one, said Yellan when reached by phone Aug. 26.
“I could not be more proud of the work that we did as a team in that building,” he told The Post and Courier. “In particular I’m humbled by how much hard work my kitchen staff put in.”
Colectivo’s brand of Mexican food was new to many Charleston diners when it opened on Sept. 6, 2023 at 2901 Maybank Highway.
Inspired by Yellan’s extensive travels to Mexico, Colectivo traded fried chips for tostadas. It served cócteles, sopes and other classically Mexican dishes that many American Mexican restaurants ignore. Rather than crafting pre-prepared, overpriced tacos, Colectivo’s chefs paired house-made tortillas with meats generously mounded onto platters with various accouterments — from diced white onions to cucumbers, charred spring onions and chile-sparked salsas.
The food resonated with many, but not enough, diners, Yellan said. Colectivo simply wasn’t busy enough to sustain a large restaurant with prime real estate on Johns Island’s main thruway.
“Restaurants serving queso and tiny tacos are a dime a dozen in Charleston,” I wrote in a May restaurant review of Colectivo. “Ones serving sopes, cócteles and delicious homemade flour tortillas are not.”
“Colectivo’s future depends on diners’ willingness to, every so often, step away from the former and embrace the latter,” the last line of the review reads.
More factored into the decision than Charleston patrons’ palates for adventurous food, Yellan said. Maybe it just wasn’t the right place at the right time. But he wonders how the restaurant’s bold approach to Mexican cuisine impacted sales.
“We never wanted to dumb down what we were doing,” Yellan said. “That said I thought that there was some really crowd pleasing food on our menu.”
This might not be the end for Colectivo, whether Yellan brings the concept back as another brick-and-mortar restaurant or occasional pop-up.
The chef is always going to want to cook Mexican food. He hopes he gets another chance to share his vision of how it ought to be prepared.
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