Ramón Cardenas Sr., who founded one of Salt Lake City’s most popular and acclaimed Mexican restaurants, has died.
Cardenas — known as Don Ramón — died Friday, “surrounded by his family and loved ones,” the restaurant announced on its Facebook page Saturday. He was 92.
“Ramón’s vision, hard work, and passion for sharing authentic Mexican cuisine helped create Red Iguana — a place that has become more than just a restaurant, but a home for countless memories in Salt Lake City since 1985,” the Facebook post said. “His spirit lives on in every plate served, every tradition honored, and every guest welcomed through our doors.”
Cardenas and his wife, Maria, opened the first Red Iguana in 1985, a small, four-table restaurant on Salt Lake City’s west side. After a fire in 1986 burned that location, the Cardenas family moved into its current location, at 736 W. North Temple, just west of downtown Salt Lake City.
Red Iguana quickly became the go-to place for what its sign bragged was “killer Mexican food.”
Don Ramón ran the restaurant until 1998, when Maria’s health started to decline. Don Ramón provided full-time care for Maria until her death in 2002. Don Ramón remarried in 2009. His second wife, Liliana, survives him.
Don Ramón and Maria’s son, Ramón Jr., who had branched out with the Blue Iguana restaurant downtown, took over as Red Iguana’s executive chef in 1998. When Ramón Jr. died in 2004 of a brain hemorrhage at age 42, Don Ramón came out of retirement, at the insistence of his daughter, Lucy Cardenas.
“We had never written down the recipes,” Lucy Cardenas told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2017. “My brother just had them in his head.” Don Ramón helped Lucy reconstruct the recipes, she said, and this time they wrote them down.
Lucy Cardenas said in 2017 that her father, then in his 80s, would come in regularly to maintain quality control. “He tastes and checks in with customers and gives it a thumbs up or thumbs down,” said Lucy, who formerly served on The Tribune’s board of directors.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The front counter at Red Iguana in Salt Lake City in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic closed restaurants across the nation.
The “O.G.” Red Iguana often attracted a crowd, with more people outside trying to get in than could sit inside. Lucy Cardenas and her husband, Bill Coker, who bought the business from Ramón Sr. in 2005, opened Red Iguana 2, a couple of blocks away, at 866 W. South Temple, near the railroad tracks. That location expanded in 2015, adding a large dining room with a 13-seat bar and outdoor patio.
The family launched a fast-food version, Taste of Red Iguana, in the City Creek Center’s food court when the shopping destination opened in 2012.
Yelp named Red Iguana one of the top 100 restaurants in the United States in 2022. Readers of Salt Lake magazine voted it the city’s best Mexican restaurant in 2024. Over the years, Red Iguana has been written up by The New York Times, USA Today and Food & Wine magazine. Celebrity chef Guy Fieri featured Red Iguana on his Food Network show, “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” in 2008, where he helped Lucy Cardenas prepare 15 gallons of mole.
The restaurant also became popular with touring musicians when they came through Salt Lake City, and the restaurant’s “Wall of Fame” features photos of ZZ Top, “Mistress of the Dark” Elvira, Los Lobos’ Louis Perez and comedian Lewis Black.
A funeral mass is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 9, 2:30 p.m., at the Cathedral of the Madeline, 331 E. South Temple, Salt Lake City. A celebration of life will follow, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Utah Capitol rotunda, 350 N. State St. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in Don Ramón’s name to the Rose Park Neighborhood Center and Good Samaritan Foundation.