Ben Affleck’s visit to Luna’s Mexican Grill in Swarthmore sends business to the ‘next level’
Cristina Luna Ramirez's restaurant runs on family and the flavors of northern Mexico. Her current success comes after years of hard work, practice, and adaptability.
When Ben Affleck visited a Swarthmore restaurant in March, he was just looking for lunch. To Cristina Luna Ramirez, owner of Luna’s Mexican Grill on Park Avenue, it was so much more than that.
A picture of the actor sitting at a table eating a burrito quickly went viral, and that was all it took for Luna’s to more than make up for lost sales frozen by a harsh winter.
The restaurant had seen a little bump from a review by TikToker @Delco_jawnn the week before, but it was already starting to die down. Affleck’s March 27 visit made business blow up overnight. Ramirez called it a godsend.
“I don’t think celebrities understand how much value they bring to a mom-and-pop shop like this,” said Ramirez, 52.
» READ MORE: Ben Affleck stopped by this Swarthmore restaurant for lunch
The story Ramirez heard later from a staffer at Swarthmore College was that Affleck and his teenager, Fin, a prospective student, arrived on campus early that morning for a visit. The tour didn’t start until the afternoon, and the pair found themselves with time to kill and stomachs to fill. The staffer directed them to Luna’s.
Ramirez missed Affleck in her restaurant (by a minute and 37 seconds, according to her security cameras, she says) but caught up with the actor at Dunkin’ a few doors down and was able to chat with him and snap a selfie.
The next day, Luna’s was open two hours later than usual because they were so busy. Ramirez said customers were coming by hoping to get a glimpse of Affleck, thinking he might be shooting a movie in town.
“It was next level,” Ramirez said. “I was making three to four times what I was making the week before.”
Suddenly, she needed 120 to 175 pounds of steak per week instead of the usual 60 to 80, and 40 pounds of fish instead of 20. One case of tequila would last two to three weeks before Affleck’s visit. Now she needed two cases for a single week.
‘What did you just do?’
Luna’s success comes from more than a cameo by a famous actor. It took hard work, practice, and adaptability.
Ramirez lived in Texas for most of her life. She spent 10 years as a teacher, another 10 years as a librarian, and she was on her way to becoming a principal when she decided she was done.
Ramirez decided to move to the Philly area to be closer to her daughter, Amanda Paez, and grandchildren. She immediately fell in love with this little corner of Southeastern Pennsylvania and took a year off from working to figure out her next move.
“The only time I’m not bored is when I’m cooking,” Ramirez said. Although she was hesitant to take the leap to open a restaurant, she was already getting rave reviews. Ramirez had been cooking for Paez and her friends, who praised her talents.
“One day I just drove up with a food truck hitched to my pickup truck,” she said. “My daughter was like, ‘What did you just do?’”
She started selling tacos in April 2024 in front of the Sharon Hill Grocery Outlet, which her daughter owned at the time. By summer, she was getting booked for festivals.
“People were calling me at all hours of the day,” Ramirez said. After her mother had a stroke, she flew home for two weeks, and the calls didn’t stop. Everyone wanted to know where the “taco lady” was. She retired the food truck and knew it was time to find a brick-and-mortar location.
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It just so happened Village Vine owner John Hearn was selling his Swarthmore restaurant to fund IVF treatment for his wife, as well as find a job a little less demanding for a soon-to-be father. Ramirez tried to meet his asking price, but it was too steep.
“When she called me the first time when the deal fell through, you could tell that she was just absolutely devastated that it wasn’t going to happen,” Hearn said. “It just stuck with me.”
After a few months, Hearn had gotten another offer, but he reached out to Ramirez. He said he believed her restaurant was the best fit for the space.
“You have to be there 24-7 and put your passion and soul into it,” Hearn said. “I really believed that she could do well there and I knew she was going to put the time and effort into it that it needed.”
Hearn cut the sale price by $40,000, Ramirez said. He even helped her meet her new neighbors. In a video posted to social media announcing Village Vine’s closure, Hearn also invited Ramirez to introduce herself and her restaurant.
“Swarthmore is such a local community that that stuff matters,” Hearn said.
Luna’s officially opened on March 17, 2025. Ramirez calls it the best decision of her life.
Luna’s is built on family
Ramirez has never been to culinary school — she just loves cooking. She says her mother, Consuelo Gilliland, taught her how to cook with the flavors of northern Mexico, but she still gives some credit to her father, Catarino “José” Luna.
“I have my father’s patience in the kitchen and my mother’s ingenuity,” she said. “The way I put my cuisine together is inspired by my parents.”
Her mother was the oldest of 10 children and learned to cook for her siblings at a young age. When Ramirez’s aunts come in, they taste her mother’s influence in the food.
Ramirez is still working to perfect longtime family favorites. In recent weeks she finally recreated her mother’s pasta, made with tomato sauce, garlic, onion, and “a ton of cheese,” after trying different combinations over the years.
While she credits her mother with her recipes, her father had plenty of cooking experience in the U.S. Army. It wasn’t until after he died that Ramirez found out he was a chef while enlisted.
On Father’s Day, she’ll serve her own spin on a meal known as SOS (the unabbreviated name can’t be repeated in polite company) in honor of Luna’s military service.
Ramirez and her sisters all kept Luna in their names when they got married, and the restaurant is named in their honor. She also has help from the next generation: Her son, Matthew, works at Luna’s, too.
Giving thanks
Just as she’s honored her family in the name of her restaurant and the food she serves, Ramirez has paid tribute to her famous, unintentional benefactor. A small picture of Affleck hangs on the wall above the table where he sat.
Ramirez is grateful to the actor, as well as for her staff for all the hard work they’ve done since business took off.
“I would love to say thank you to him,” Ramirez said. Affleck could not be reached for comment.
After they met at Dunkin’, Ramirez had one parting request for Affleck.
“I didn’t want to say, ‘Hey, bring me Matt Damon and George Clooney and Brad Pitt,’ you know, because they’re all best friends,” Ramirez said. “But I was like, ‘Give me some more business.’”
That business was already on its way.