At Manjares’ 10-year celebration in 2019. Maya McFadden Photo Credit: Maya McFadden file photo Manjares, the Latin American restaurant and café that has anchored Westville Village’s corner of West Rock and Whalley avenues in Westville since 2009, has been told it must vacate its space by Se pt. 30 after its landlord declined to renew the lease, citing nearly $30,000 in unpaid rent. ArLoW — aka ArtLoftsWest, which owns the building at 382 W Rock Ave. — notified owner Ana De Los Angeles of the decision in a hand-delivered and emailed letter dated Aug. 12. The letter states that the lease covering Manjares’ space — listed as 838 Whalley Ave., Units B C — expires Sept. 30 and will not be renewed. De Los Angeles, meanwhile, is appealing for a chance to stay in business. She said she can start paying back the money with a loan that would be conditioned on obtaining a new lease, which ArLoW is not offering. Manjares has been in the space since it opened in July 2009. “We are not renewing her lease. We are not evicting,” Thea Buxbaum, a founding member of ArLoW, told the Independent, drawing a distinction between a lease non-renewal and a formal eviction proceeding. No eviction case has been filed in court, and De Los Angeles has not been served with a notice to quit. According to the letter Buxbaum sent to De Los Angeles, Manjares owes an outstanding balance of $29,819.55. De Los Angeles does not dispute that she owes the money, or that Buxbaum has the right not to renew. “I’m not refusing to pay,” she said in an interview at the restaurant, adding that she has been willing to reach an agreement on the debt. She said she fell roughly four months behind on rent. She described a financial drag she has never fully shaken since the Covid-19 pandemic, compounded by rising costs over the past year. When money was short, she said, she prioritized utilities and payroll. “Without gas you can’t cook. Without electricity you can’t keep the place open. And the employees leave without pay,” she said. Buxbaum said that ArLoW will credit $11,000 against the nearly $30,000 total by retaining a walk-in cooler and stove hood, reducing the balance to $18,819.55. The letter also states ARLOW will forgive September’s rent of $4,819.67 if the premises are surrendered on time and in good condition. “We are genuinely sorry that we have reached this point,” Buxbaum wrote. “This decision is not a reflection of the value of Manjares’ food, your effort, or the place the business has established in the community.” Buxbaum described the decision as a business necessity after years of accommodation. “We have provided many solutions. We have tried to work out options. And we cannot do that anymore,” she said. “We have tried so hard to support Ana over the years. Under other circumstances, I don’t know if another landlord would have been as patient as we have been.” The Aug. 12 letter states the decision was made after consultation with ArLoW’s attorney, finance team, commercial real estate advisors, and staff from the Connecticut Small Business Boost Fund, a state-supported low-interest loan program. It also notes that Manjares has been paying below-market rent, and that ArLoW will bring the rent to market level when the space is re-leased. De Los Angeles said her accountant had identified a loan of roughly $60,000 through that same program — CT Boost — that could have helped her pay down the debt, but that it required a longer lease commitment. She said she raised the option with Buxbaum, who agreed to meet about it. The lease non-renewal followed. Buxbaum said she concluded the loan would not be viable. Taking on roughly $60,000 in new debt, she said, was not sustainable for a business already unable to keep up with rent, and would likely leave both parties in the same position later. CT Boost loans are not forgivable and are repaid with interest over 60 or 72 months at a fixed 4.5 percent rate. De Los Angeles said she has not filed anything in court and does not yet have a lawyer, but has scheduled a consultation with an attorney. She’s hoping she can convince the landlord to allow her to find a way to pay back the money over time. Buxbaum said she expects De Los Angeles to vacate by Sept. 30, but indicated some flexibility on timing. “I’m assuming she is vacating by Sept. 30,” she said. “If there’s an alternative intention, I’m sure that she will tell us and we can work around that.” Manjares opened in July 2009. De Los Angeles, who was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York, said the name came to her in a dream about her late father after a marathon stretch of baking — three wedding cakes and roughly 15 birthday cakes over about 72 hours. She woke, wrote the name in a notebook beside her bed, and went back to sleep. She later looked up the word: “Manjares” means food of the gods. She had arrived in Manhattan as a young woman hoping to attend university, but had children first and later found herself divorced with three kids. She began baking wedding cakes from home to support the family while attending college and learning English, then trained as a pastry chef at a culinary school in New York. She and her husband, the Puerto Rican painter Miguel Trelles, moved to Westville after a friend connected them to an artist housing program — ArLoW. Two years later she took a job as a pastry chef at Lulu’s, a now-closed East Rock coffee shop, where she worked about two and a half years before opening her own place. Many of her customers there followed her to Westville. Manjares started with two tables. Today the space seats about 80. De Los Angeles described the restaurant as something closer to a community center than a café — a place where students work for hours, where she once counted a dozen or more nursing mothers with newborns at the same time, and where politicians have held events. She said Mayor Justin Elicker held his first two campaign events at Manjares. “Instead of calling it a café, you could almost call it the Manjares club,” she said. De Los Angeles said she has watched children grow up in the café. Some who first came in as toddlers are now in college or working as professionals, she said. One recently asked to hold the dinner the night before their wedding at Manjares, specifically so she would be the one to cook it. Asked what she would want to say to the city and the community, De Los Angeles said she isn’t looking for charity or donations, but for the community to get involved. She wants Manjares to continue being what it has been — a meeting place for families, for politicians, for people with nowhere else to go. “I’m not asking for a handout,” she said. “I’m trying to get people to understand that this is a community place that still has a lot left to give.” “It would be a shame if a place where a community gathers every day stopped existing,” she said. Lizzy Donius, who runs the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, a neighborhood organization focused on economic development and community events, has a particularly precise memory of when Manjares opened: Her son William was born the same morning. “We always call him the Manjares baby,” said Donius, whose son just turned 17. She and De Los Angeles later realized they had both been awake at 4 a.m. that day — Donius in labor, De Los Angeles baking to open her doors. Donius began coming in soon after with a group of other new mothers, babies in tow. Donius, who has lived in Westville for 18 years and briefly lived across the street on West Rock Avenue while the space was being turned into Manjares, described the restaurant as central to the neighborhood. “Manjares is just an incredible anchor for our neighborhood, and our living room for those of us who live here,” she said. “It’s one of those neighborhood spots that just becomes part of the fabric of the community.” She added that De Los Angeles doesn’t get enough credit for the food itself. “Ana is also an amazing chef and an amazing baker,” she said. “I don’t think she always gets shouted out for that.” Stacy Trachten, who lived in the area for more than 30 years and now lives in Woodbridge, said she has been coming to Manjares since it opened. “I just adore Ana,” she said. “She has a heart of gold, and she’s all about community and people, and we want to support her and continue to support.” She said she believes in supporting small local businesses, and that other regulars feel the same way. “Those that frequent her business also believe the same, because they tend to see the same people coming and going.” Angelica Echevarría, who has worked at Manjares for about 11 years, said the job changed her. She came from Puerto Rico in 2014 to study, spoke no English when she arrived, and had worked only kitchen jobs at Wendy’s and Popeyes before landing at the café. She later learned English, returned to school, and graduated as a dental assistant. “This is where I started to speak without fear,” she said, describing herself as painfully shy when she began. She said she and De Los Angeles have grown close enough to read each other. “She knows when I’m sad, when I’m happy, and I know the same about her,” Echevarría said. “If something happens to her, or something happens to me, we notice.” New York band Sonido Costeño at Manjares in 2025. Jisu Sheen photo The post Landlord Orders Westville’s Manjares To Leave appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less