Two guys walk into a bar. Another walks in. “Hey, Chuy,” he says.
The nickname stuck. The two guys ended up starting a restaurant in Austin, Texas. They called it Chuy’s.
“‘Chuy’ is kind of like a nickname like ‘bro’ or ‘dude’, it’s like a Hispanic nickname,” said Elliot Roberts, assistant general manager of Chuy’s in Gainesville. “It’s kind of like a slang term for saying hi to your friend.”
Chuy’s, a Tex-Mex restaurant based in Texas, opened its first Florida location on June 26 at 3410 Archer Road. The restaurant’s yellow, pink and green roof peeks out from behind the CVS in Butler Plaza on Archer Road.
Construction started around March, Roberts said, and a Texas-based décor team put together unique decorations. A string of 1,264 fish hangs over the bar, lit-up fake palm trees cover one room and an Elvis shrine is tucked away in a wall near the bar.
Roberts, who moved here from Houston a few weeks ago, said Chuy’s chose a Gainesville location because of its market.
“Gainesville is similar to Austin in that it’s right by a college,” he said.
Sammi Jacob, a 19-year-old political science sophomore, has worked at Chuy’s for about a month. She said she likes that the food is fresh and management encourages staff to have fun.
“Chuy’s has like a cult following,” she said. “So I knew they must have good food and be an awesome place.”
