Peoria Mexican restaurant cancels outdoor Cinco de Mayo festivities after ‘disgusting and racist’ insults
PEORIA (25News Now) - A Peoria restaurant will be open for regular service on Cinco de Mayo, but is canceling outdoor festivities, citing a dangerous parking lot party and “disgusting and racist” insults.
Los Cabos Cantina & Grill will be open 11-9 p.m., seating is first-come, first served, no reservations with no live entertainment or DJ scheduled.
Los Cabos has hosted their annual celebration since 2015, with the goal to create a welcoming, family-friendly environment to celebrate food, music and community.
The restaurant cited the continued disrespect for their strong family values, feeling they cannot host an event, “where we feel we are putting our staff, our volunteers, and the attendees who respect our rules in the way of danger.”
In 2025, the restaurant was forced to close early because of capacity issues, which turned into a “dangerous” parking lot party as well as continued fights.
“The DISGUSTING and racist insults we were subject to as we tried to clean up the parking lot after closing are inexcusable,” the restaurant wrote on Facebook. “We were forced to pull our staff into the building for safety and had to wait for the crowd to disperse.”
The full post is below:
Peoria Here is our official statement:
We will be OPEN on May 5, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM for regular restaurant service.
* No reservations will be accepted
* Seating will be first come, first served, send someone to get on our seating list early!
* No live entertainment or DJ will be scheduled
WE WILL HAVE NO OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES
Read further if you would like to know a lot more:
Since 2015, our annual Cinco de Mayo celebration has been one of the most meaningful traditions for our team at Los Cabos Cantina & Grill. It has always been our goal to create a welcoming, family-friendly environment where our guests can come together to celebrate culture, food, music, and community.
Unfortunately we must announce this year’s official cancellation of our outside festival. We will be open 11am-9pm for ONLY for regular restaurant business.
Anyone who has attended in the past can attest to the amazing mix of people and how fun it CAN be. The last few years, the outside party has been not so fun for us due to the continued disrespect for our very strong family values.
We simply cannot host an event where we feel we are putting our staff, our volunteers, and the attendees who respect our rules in the way of danger.
Last year, we were the unexpected host of a dangerous parking lot party after we were forced to close early due to capacity issues and continued fights despite our very best efforts to provide adequate security and crowd control for the event.
The DISGUSTING and racist insults we were subject to as we tried to clean up the parking lot after closing are inexcusable. We were forced to pull our staff into the building for safety and had to wait for the crowd to disperse.
What we were left afterwards were our own broken hearts, a horrible mess of broken bottles, garbage, dirty intimate articles of clothing and other obscene and gross things that no one would want to touch.
We share this space with many other professional businesses that we respect and we worked through the night to clean all of it up so none of their employees or patrons of those other businesses were witness to any of this when they came in the morning.
It was disheartening and humiliating. What was supposed to be a great and fun day turned into chaos and a filthy display of our community in general. We DO NOT welcome, nor will we facilitate this kind of behavior! No amount of money is worth compromising our family values or respect for our community.
This isn’t the first time this has happened but we too, must shut down another fun community event.
Sorry this is such a long post, we wanted to fully explain the situation and we hope we can move forward with our continued respect and pride. We did it the best for a long time. We hope to move forward with another outdoor event in the future. Now isn’t the time. We hope you understand. We need to do better as a community!
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