The Close of a Flamboyant Life : Style: Restaurateur and Latin art promoter Mario Tamayo dies. He started renaissance on eastern Melrose with Caribbean eateries. His last venture was Atlas Bar & Grill.
It was New Year’s Eve, 1992. When you walked through the curtained entrance to Atlas Bar & Grill, you found a spectacular mirrored wall, a cavernous expanse with a stage flanked by hanging suns, and beautiful men and women imbibing as well as serving drinks.
Presiding over it all was Mario Tamayo--indefatigable restaurateur, style maker, and promoter of Latin American arts. On this evening, he was dressed in a tuxedo, swathed in a black feather boa, his dark hair slicked down with a curlicue adorning his forehead. As always, he brandished a cigarette holder. On stage that night, Eartha Kitt sang “I’m Still Here”--appropriate enough for this group of artists and partygoers who rode the bumps and crests of the cutting edge.
Tamayo flourished in this milieu until his death early Friday morning of complications of AIDS. Along the way, he jump-started the lively if brief renaissance of eastern Melrose Avenue with the Caribbean restaurants Cha Cha Cha and Cafe Mambo, and an art gallery--later a men’s clothing store--called Modern Objects.
He introduced the various flavors of Latin American food and art to an avant garde cultural scene that had been largely devoid of Latino influences up to that point. He collected a dazzling and devoted array of friends and connections, from musicians such as Puerto Rican bandleader Tito Puente and Cuban singer Celia Cruz to such artists as David Hockney and Roberto Gilde Montes.
In a town known for schmoozers, he was a networker par excellence. And nothing better exemplified his style than his last restaurant, Atlas Bar & Grill. It was a world of latter-day Hollywood glamour that Tamayo stubbornly stoked even as the street out in front was unglamorously torn up by Metro Rail construction and the restaurant’s valet parking was curtailed.
“If you spent the evening with him, he treated you like a superstar,” said fashion designer Jef Huereque, a friend and former business partner. “Mario always remembered something about you.”
The Colombian-born Tamayo immigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of 8 and molded himself into a Hollywood success story of several chapters before his death at 36.
The third of six children, he spent 10 years in Yonkers, N.Y., with his seamstress mother and mechanic father before the family moved to San Gabriel. He attended East Los Angeles College for a year before enrolling in beauty school on a whim and becoming a hairdresser. He acquired a roster of celebrity clients, worked as a stylist for fashion magazines and videos, and had his own Melrose Avenue salon for a while.
But by 1985, he was restless for new challenges. He was on his way to London to study film when a stopover in New York and a chance dinner with friends at a Caribbean restaurant spurred a new plan. He returned to Los Angeles and decided to introduce Caribbean cuisine in the city. With a chef and partner, Tibirio Prado, he opened Cha Cha Cha in 1986 in a tiny building at the shabby corner of Melrose and Virgil avenues. His mother told him the neighborhood was a dump, but Tamayo had a gift for turning ugly ducklings into flamboyant swans.
The restaurant was an overnight sensation, and Tamayo took the profits and, with Huereque, opened the art gallery Modern Objects--later remaking it into the clothing store--also on Melrose. His third venture was Cafe Mambo in 1987.
His restaurants became meccas for varied crowds. You might walk in and see state Sen. Art Torres, French designer Thierry Mugler, and a passel of artists, established and renegade.
“He always had such a creative touch in bringing together cuisine and culture that I think was very different for Los Angeles,” said Torres, who sometimes took his mother to brunch at Cha Cha Cha.
Tamayo’s businesses helped attract others to Melrose and for a while the area flourished. But after a few years, Tamayo had a falling out with his partner, Prado, and he left Cha Cha Cha. Eventually he closed Modern Objects, a victim of hard economic times, and Cafe Mambo. Huereque says the neighborhood has never been the same since Tamayo moved out.
The restaurateur had turned his attentions to what would be his last and grandest venture, Atlas Bar & Grill, which he opened with a group of limited partners. The food was continental and uneven, but the ambience was spectacular. In the best tradition of restaurants as theater, Atlas always boasted a wild array of patrons as well as entertainment.
Tamayo hopped around town from clubs to galleries, catching the attention of gossip columnists and magazines such as Vanity Fair and Details. But he wasn’t just a party animal. He was on the board of AIDS Project L.A. as well as Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.
“He attended every opening, whether it was art or a can opening,” said Xiomara Fonseca, a close friend of Tamayo and the road manager for Cruz. “He said, ‘It’s always important to make the time.’ He was always running around, pushing Latino artists.”
Maurice Tuchman, senior curator of 20th-Century art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, agreed. “Mario was important in always raising the flag for Latin art,” he said. Startled to learn of Tamayo’s death, Tuchman said he had been planning to discuss with him artists he was watching.
The artist Roberto Gilde Montes met Tamayo at a show for the artist in Santa Fe. “Even though it was a happening for artists, he was kind of the center of it all,” said Gilde Montes, who recalls that at the time Tamayo had platinum-colored hair. Even in Santa Fe, Tamayo had masterminded a party afterward at a restaurant--with about 200 friends. “It was very difficult to pay the bill,” said Gilde Montes, chuckling.
Tamayo’s lifestyle was not unusually luxurious. According to his friends, he put his money back into his businesses. He collected the art of many of his artist friends. And he lived near his restaurant in the Mid-Wilshire district in an Art Deco apartment with views of the beach and Downtown.
His extravagances were all in his style. “He has this Latin chic,” said Huereque. “He was a dandy, I guess you would say. He was a man of many changes. He had blond hair, red hair, short hair, long hair. He had incredible style.”
In his final weeks, as friends visited and chatted and cooked him dinner, he had shaved his head. Chemotherapy had begun to ravage his hair. He attended an opening a month ago, dressed in white slacks and white sweater, his head slickly absent of hair.
He spent his last days in his apartment, and he died as he lived, surrounded by family and friends.
