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The next day, the breakfast and lunch restaurant at 98 E. Congress St., in the former longtime home of Wig-O-Rama, posted a “Thank you Tucson� note announcing it was closing effective immediately.

Owner Patricia Schwabe blamed a social media hiccup for the confusion; she forgot to tell her social media manager that she was planning to close the restaurant at the end of business Tuesday, the same day of the optimistic post, she explained Wednesday morning as several customers came by thinking the restaurant was open.

“People loved coming here,� she said. “They loved the space and they loved the coffee.�

The closing came two weeks after The National, the fast-casual restaurant that served coffee, pastries and breakfast sandwiches and an array of grab-and-go lunch and breakfast items, celebrated its first anniversary.

Schwabe said the move opens the door for the award-winning Elgin winery, to open its first Tucson tasting room.

“Los Milics wanted to come downtown and ... they really wanted to have a kitchen and the ability to present their wines with more food,� said Schwabe, who also owns the upscale Mexican restaurant at 50 E. Broadway,

Schwabe said Los Milics had initially looked at the long-vacant 100 E. Congress, which was once home to Grill diner. But that space would have needed a new kitchen.

“It just seemed like the right decision to allow them to use the kitchen that was just built,� said Schwabe, who owns the building with her and husband Ron’s and partner Marcel Dabdoub.

Los Milics, which took top honors at the 2025 Arizona Wine Competition last March, plans to open the tasting room Jan. 5, according to its spokeswoman Pam Hait.

Winemaker and former aviation consultant Mo Garfinkle established Los Milics in Elgin in 2018 with their wives, Stephanie Garfinkle and Ita Milic. In addition to their 20 acres in Elgin, the winery acquired two vineyards in Elfrida, an hour from Elgin. Hait said Los Milics now has 70 acres under vine.

From the start, Milic and Garfinkle wanted to create a destination winery, building on Milic’s James Beard Award-winning Scottsdale restaurant  with Chef Charleen Badman.

They brought in the husband and wife architecture team of Thamarit “Tommy� Suchart and Patricia Szu-Ping Chen Suchart to design the winery. They also added a restaurant and built nine one-bedroom casitas on site.

In addition to the winery in Elgin, Los Milics has had a small tasting room in Scottsdale since 2022; they are now in the process of moving that to a larger space across the street, Hait said.

The Tucson tasting room menu will include shared plates from Executive Chef Trevor Routman.