HISTORY OF THE ARMADILLO
The Armadillo is more than a family-oriented restaurant---its a family-made restaurant! The history of The Armadillo begins deep in the roots of northern Mexico, where a beautiful young woman was a fantastic cook---perhaps TOO good a cook.
Great Great Grandmother Luisa was living at a Hacienda in Chihuahua (Central northern Mexico) when she was kidnapped by renowned bandit Pancho Villa after sampling some of her cooking. Unwilling to part with such fresh, delicious food, Pancho Villa took our grandmother and her young daughter and integrated them as part of his horseback posse. Luisa served as a faithful cook on his gravy train for 4 and a half years during the1920s. Pancho Villa was very good to our grandmother and her daughter throughout her captivity, and eventually released the two women so that her daughter could attend school.
When the daughter was grown, she met Great Grandpa Magdaleno Lucio, a dashing young Mexican man who had hopped the border at the age of 12 and supported himself with odd jobs. They had three children together, one of them a son named Joseph, who purchased the LaSalle Hotel and Bar in LaSalle, Colorado using every spare penny saved from his career as a barber. He decided to rename it The Armadillo Club.
Located right along the railroad tracks in LaSalle, The Armadillo Club initially attracted some pretty tough customers! However, word of Great Aunt Julia's delicious, hearty Mexican cuisine, based on recipes from our infamous grandmother, spread throughout town and to other nearby towns. Soon the bar crowd started drifting away, and more and more people returned for the great food. Young Louie Lucio saw an opportunity to share the authentic, tasty family recipes with greater numbers of people, and took steps to transform The Armadillo into a restaurant.
In 1972, Lucio created the first standard Armadillo menu, officially transitioning the once rough-neck bar into a family-oriented restaurant serving hundreds of people a year. Just eight years later, the Lucio family opened their first satellite location in Fort Collins, and then a third one in Longmont in 1983. The family continued to expand over the next 25 years, and currently manage seven popular locations throughout the Front Range.
ABOUT US
The Lucio family has been preparing hearty, high-quality Mexican food for customers since the 1970s, using age-old family recipes from the heart of Northern Mexico. Today, the Lucio family is proud to continue to offer fresh, authentic Mexican cuisine in a family-oriented environment. Everything is made in-house from scratch, using recipes that date back many generations. Louie's son Brandon Lucio and daughter, Vanessa Lucio, currently help their father in running all 7 locations.
We would like to thank all of our patrons for the success of the Armadillo Restaurants. Our family has always been about serving your family, and we look forward to doing it for many years to come.
