In many ways it was a typical night at the Green Onion Mexican Restaurant in San Pedro.
Crowds lined up with warm hugs for old and new friends, hungry diners crowding a barely-passable entryway waiting for a table.
The dining room was packed, filled with conversation and the sounds of food and drinks being served. Live football aired on the television in the restaurant bar.
There were greetings and margaritas — and laughter — as the aroma of fresh-cooked Mexican food filled the air, priming the appetite.
But amid the festivities on this Nov. 12 evening there also were some tears. They were shared among the many friends and families who had gathered on this night to say a formal goodbye — and a heartfelt “thank you” — to their favorite restaurant and its owner and employees.
The landmark restaurant will be closing in the coming week, making way for construction of a new mid-rise residential development.
The hometown party paid special tribute to Bob Sanjabi who founded and owned the restaurant all these years. At 91, Sanjabi has long been the restaurant’s cheerful and familiar presence who knew — and still knows — many of his customers and their families by name, stopping at tables to make sure no one runs out of the restaurant’s special salsa.
The Green Onion will be open a little while longer, now expected to close Friday, Nov. 21, and it was known a year ago that this would be coming.
But now, the final end of the beloved gathering spot is hitting folks hard.
The building that houses the restaurant at 145 W. Sixth St., near Harbor Boulevard, will be coming down in early 2026 to make way for a planned eight-story mid-rise with apartments and ground floor cafe and commercial space.
Sanjabi decided a year ago that when that time came, the closing would also mark the end of the Green Onion that earned its place as one of the port town’s most popular and long-standing restaurants.
“I must have made the people happy,” Sanjabi said of the adoring crowd that gathered in the past week for the informal party. “We gave them good food, good prices, and friendship.”
When the restaurant had to raise prices recently, one regular said, it was by $1.
Sanjabi was offered a restaurant spot by developers on the ground floor at the new mid-rise.
But he declined.
“It’s time for us to do this,” he said of the closure. “I’ve worked (at the restaurant) for 43 years, day and night.”
Before opening the Green Onion, Sanjabi got his start at what was the original Red Onion in Rolling Hills Estates, moving up eventually to become a co-owner.
When he launched out on his own, he decided to name his new restaurant the “Green” Onion. It opened in in 1983 at 17th and Gaffey streets in San Pedro — where Puesta Del Sol Mexican Bar and Grill is now at 1622 S. Gaffey St. — before moving to a newly vacated Trani’s Majestic space on Sixth Street.
It seemed almost too big, said Green Onion’s longtime General Manager Eileen Boblak.
How would they ever fill it up? What would they even do with what was a set-aside banquet room?
Turns out it wouldn’t be a problem.
The Green Onion thrived. Its very walls up until the end, filled with photos of all its many patrons through the generations, testified to that.
Over the years, Sanjabi took the photos and framed them — and then hung them on just about every available wall space throughout the restaurant.
Now in its last days, many of those photos have been claimed and taken off the walls by the families and those in the photographs, with the owner’s permission.
Much of his success, Sanjabi said, was a natural connection with the cuisine: “American people love Mexican food.”
Along with the recent celebration held in the restaurant’s banquet hall, “good-bye” festivities included a mariachi band, a special City of Los Angeles proclamation presented to Sanjabi, and an impromptu crowd “Hip hip hooray!” cheer for the owner.
“I can’t believe you’re really leaving, we’re so sad,” longtime patron Rita Stavros of Rancho Palos Verdes told Sanjabi. She and her husband Mike have been frequent customers for many years.
A photo of the family — with their then 3-year-old grandson who is now 20, he was “a little tiny guy,” she said — was among those that hung on the restaurant walls.
They’d ask their grandson, “Where do you want to go?” when the family was heading out to eat. Rita Stavros said he’d always reply: “I want to go to the Green Onion!”
Sanjabi, she said, would often “come over to the table to say ‘hello,’ sometimes he’d buy us a drink.”
While they had “the best salsa,” Rita Stavros said, “it was more than the food” that drew so many loyal patrons to the Green Onion.
“It was almost like a family,” said her friend Brenda Puleri of Torrance, who also was at the goodbye party with husband Gene. Both have been regulars at the Green Onion for years.
John Bagakis, owner of one of San Pedro’s popular pizza restaurant, Big Nick’s, has some special history with the Green Onion. He carries a copy of a photo showing his dad, Nick, doing drywall work at the restaurant’s building on Sixth Street, though he also worked on the restaurant’s earlier location on Gaffey Street helping to quickly reopen it following a fire.
Bagakis, who was born in 1982 around the time when the restaurant opened, said the Green Onion has been a central gathering spot, recalling how he watched the O.J. Simpson “slow-speed” chase in 1994 on the television there.
“Literally almost every birthday dinner or special occasion growing up was in one of their dining rooms,” he said.
For Chanthell Nelson, operations director at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, the Green Onion became the Friday night go-to gathering spot after graduation from Mary Star of the Sea High School. Ever since, she said, birthdays, Valentine’s Days and other special occasions have been celebrated at the restaurant.
“It was the camaraderie,” she said of the Green Onion’s enduring appeal. “Smiling faces, welcoming arms.”
So what now?
While it may be a longshot, some of the restaurant’s loyal, long-time employees are quietly scouting for a possible new location.
General Manager Eileen Boblak confirmed in an email that the restaurant “did make the decision not to relocate, opening a restaurant in California is a huge undertaking, including with the bureaucracy and current business climate.”
But she added: “Should any of our key employees who have been with us for decades find a location and choose to carry on the Green Onion name and traditions we’ve established, we are ready, willing and able to help them own a round 2 Green Onion.”