HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Four-generation El Paso restaurant in continuous operation since 1927 — next door to Concordia Cemetery, where more than 60,000 people are buried, including gunfighter John Wesley Hardin.
3622 E Missouri Ave, El Paso, TX 79903
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Casual Mexican restaurant; entrees in the $10–$20 range.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Single-story restaurant on flat urban lot adjacent to cemetery
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1927 · Nearly 100-year-old El Paso family restaurant · Prohibition-era speakeasy history · Texas House Resolution recognition · Adjacent to Concordia Cemetery (est. 1856)
Antonio O. Flores founded the restaurant at 3622 E Missouri Ave in 1927, at the corner of a city block that borders Concordia Cemetery — one of the oldest burial grounds in El Paso, in continuous use since its first interment in 1856. Flores named the original establishment Tony's Place and ran it through the Prohibition era, with slot machines and liquor stores concealed behind false walls and a trained mule reportedly used to transport goods between the site and Fort Bliss.
The cafe attracted soldiers from the fort and, according to family history, notable visitors including Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, and the Andrews Sisters. During Prohibition, the establishment's graveyard adjacency likely served a practical function — the cemetery walls provided a degree of visual cover from the street.
In June 1968, Flores's daughter Lilia Flores Duran and her husband John G. Duran took over the business and renamed it L&J Cafe, the initials standing for Lilia and John and their three children. John Duran died on December 11, 1987, and the third generation — their son Leo Duran and his wife Frances — assumed ownership and have managed the restaurant since. The El Paso Inc. identified L&J in 2024 as a nearly 100-year-old landmark of El Paso's Segundo Barrio culinary tradition.
El Paso's Texas House Resolution 102 formally recognized L&J Cafe's contribution to El Paso culture. The restaurant is locally nicknamed 'the Old Place by the Graveyard' — a reference to Concordia Cemetery across the lot line that has become the cafe's informal identity.
Sources
The paranormal reputation of L&J Cafe is tied directly to its immediate neighbor: Concordia Cemetery, whose perimeter wall runs along the restaurant's lot. The Perceptive Travel account of a 2017 visit includes the owner's own description of waking in the night to hear a woman wailing near the cemetery boundary. On at least one occasion, police were called; the sounds ceased the moment the cemetery gate was opened, with no source found.
Staff and guests have separately reported seeing lights — described as spectral rather than mechanical — moving across the cemetery grounds and toward the restaurant. These accounts appear in hobbyist paranormal roundups of El Paso and are consistent with the broader documentation of Concordia Cemetery as the city's most frequently cited haunted location.
Concordia Cemetery holds the graves of John Wesley Hardin, Buffalo Soldiers, Texas Rangers, and Civil War veterans, and has been in use since 1856. US Ghost Adventures and Austin Ghost Tours both list the cemetery as a site of documented paranormal activity, and some accounts note that activity near L&J Cafe is an extension of the cemetery's reputation rather than an independent phenomenon. The restaurant itself does not market its paranormal adjacency but the association is well established in El Paso tourism and travel writing.
L&J Cafe has served El Paso border Mexican food since 1927, founded by Antonio Flores as Tony's Place during Prohibition and passed through four generations of the Flores-Duran family. The restaurant sits directly adjacent to Concordia Cemetery, where over 60,000 people are buried. Noted early patrons included Clark Gable and Robert Taylor.
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