Williamsburg restaurant obtains liquor license

You can now legally purchase alcohol in Williamsburg again.

El Palenque restaurant, which is located inside the Cumberland Regional Mall, now has its full liquor license.

The restaurant started selling beer on Sept. 11 and on Friday it also began serving mixed drinks.

"She now has a full menu of both malt beverages and distilled spirits," noted Williamsburg Mayor Roddy Harrison.

Harrison also serves as the city’s Alcohol Beverage Control Administrator and he purchased the first beer sold at the restaurant.
El Palenque describes itself as a Tex Mex restaurant that offers a "delicious variety of authentic Mexican dishes," according to its Facebook page.

In March 2012, nearly 1,200 Williamsburg residents went to the polls and by a 14-vote margin approved the sale of alcoholic beverages by the drink in restaurants that seat at least 100 people and derive at least 70 percent of their profits from the sale of food.

In December 2012, Hong Kong Buffet became the first and up until last month only restaurant in Williamsburg to ever receive a liquor license.

However, by October 2013 the restaurant had quit serving alcohol.

Harrison, who strongly backed the effort to allow alcohol sales in Williamsburg, said he thinks El Palenque will be more successful with alcohol sales than its predecessor.

Harrison said he thinks alcohol sales fizzled at Hong Kong Buffet largely because the cuisine wasn’t real conducive to alcohol.

"From what I understand, most of the places around that are Chinese restaurants will start selling and then usually taper off," Harrison said.

"I don’t think it was conducive to the type of cuisine. This particular type of cuisine at El Palenque, usually you do think of alcohol with it. I think it will be a lot more successful."

Harrison admits that he has no idea how much tax revenue will be generated through alcohol sales at El Palenque.

"I predicted before but I have no clue. It depends on how well it goes over with them out there," Harrison noted.