Sikwa closes its Los Yoses dining room in San José
The first Costa Rican restaurant on Latin America's 50 Best, No. 25 in 2024, gives no reason or reopening date and says only that the project will transform.
Sikwa closes its dining room in Los Yoses, San José, after eight years, the restaurant said in an Instagram post reported on 21 October by La Nación and El Financiero. Sikwa was the first Costa Rican restaurant voted into Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants, and the list named it the best restaurant in Costa Rica in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The announcement gives no reason why Sikwa closes and says nothing about the staff. “Today we close a cycle,” the team wrote, adding that “Sikwa does not end, it transforms” and that it is exploring what its next chapter will be. Neither newspaper reported a new address, format or timeline.
Sikwa closes seven weeks after Pablo Bonilla left
Sikwa promises a transformation, but for now it has no address, no date and no founder.
The closure follows the departure of its founder. Chef Pablo Bonilla announced on 1 September on Facebook that he was leaving the project, which he described as a collective effort that would stay with a team committed to its identity, La Nación reported. “Sikwa changed the way I understand cooking and also the way I understand Costa Rica,” he said, as quoted by El Observador.
Bonilla opened Sikwa in 2018 after five years of research into the food of Costa Rica's Indigenous communities, and described it to El Financiero as a centre of gastronomic education and information that sells food. He told El Observador that cooking “begins long before you enter a kitchen”, in the territory and in its people.
In September, Bonilla said he was preparing a restaurant in Aruba built on research, local produce and dialogue between Caribbean cultures, alongside consulting, training and international research work, according to La República. The reports did not name the Aruba restaurant or give an opening date beyond the month.
Four years on the Latin America's 50 Best ranking
Sikwa entered the extended 51-100 list of Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants at No. 86 in 2022, then climbed to No. 47 in 2023 and No. 25 in 2024 before slipping to No. 43 in 2025, according to El Financiero and the organisation's 2025 list. Bonilla had called the position a number “that can fluctuate year to year”.
It is not the first time Sikwa closes its doors. In late 2024 the restaurant shut for about a month to renovate and rework its menu, and in November that year it moved to a smaller room on the same Los Yoses property, La Nación reported. That closure came with a reopening date; this one does not.
On 4 November The World's 50 Best Restaurants ceremony comes to Lima, the first edition held in South America. For now, the Los Yoses address that first put Costa Rica on the regional list has no reopening date.
