The National restaurantβs Facebook post on Tuesday forecasted a βfresh start for a new week of a new month.β
The next day, the breakfast and lunch restaurant at 98 E. Congress St., in the former longtime home of Wig-O-Rama, posted a βThank you Tucsonβ note announcing it was closing effective immediately.
Owner Patricia Schwabe blamed a social media hiccup for the confusion; she forgot to tell her social media manager that she was planning to close the restaurant at the end of business Tuesday, the same day of the optimistic post, she explained Wednesday morning as several customers came by thinking the restaurant was open.
βPeople loved coming here,β she said. βThey loved the space and they loved the coffee.β
Schwabe
The closing came two weeks after The National, the fast-casual restaurant that served coffee, pastries and breakfast sandwiches and an array of grab-and-go lunch and breakfast items, celebrated its first anniversary.
Schwabe said the move opens the door for the award-winning Elgin winery, Los Milics Vineyards, to open its first Tucson tasting room.
The National located at 98 E. Congress Street closed on Tuesday just over a year after Patricia Schwabe opened it. According to a sign on the window, the space will be filled by Los Milics Vineyards from Elgin, which is opening a restaurant wine tasting business.
βLos Milics wanted to come downtown and ... they really wanted to have a kitchen and the ability to present their wines with more food,β said Schwabe, who also owns the upscale Mexican restaurant Penca at 50 E. Broadway,
Schwabe said Los Milics had initially looked at the long-vacant 100 E. Congress, which was once home to Grill diner. But that space would have needed a new kitchen.
βIt just seemed like the right decision to allow them to use the kitchen that was just built,β said Schwabe, who owns the building with her and husband Ronβs Peach Properties and partner Marcel Dabdoub.
Los Milics, which took top honors at the 2025 Arizona Wine Competition last March, plans to open the tasting room Jan. 5, according to its spokeswoman Pam Hait.
The National located at 98 E. Congress Street closed on Tuesday just over a year after Patricia Schwabe opened it. According to a sign on the window, the space will be filled by Los Milics Vineyards from Elgin, which is opening a restaurant wine tasting business. November 5, 2025.
Winemaker Pavle Milic and former aviation consultant Mo Garfinkle established Los Milics in Elgin in 2018 with their wives, Stephanie Garfinkle and Ita Milic. In addition to their 20 acres in Elgin, the winery acquired two vineyards in Elfrida, an hour from Elgin. Hait said Los Milics now has 70 acres under vine.
From the start, Milic and Garfinkle wanted to create a destination winery, building on Milicβs James Beard Award-winning Scottsdale restaurant FnBΒ with Chef Charleen Badman.
They brought in the husband and wife architecture team of Thamarit βTommyβ Suchart and Patricia Szu-Ping Chen Suchart to design the winery. They also added a restaurant and built nine one-bedroom casitas on site.
In addition to the winery in Elgin, Los Milics has had a small tasting room in Scottsdale since 2022; they are now in the process of moving that to a larger space across the street, Hait said.
The Tucson tasting room menu will include shared plates from Executive Chef Trevor Routman.
