Chuy’s: Will it become the new Annie’s Santa Fe?

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• Austin’s popular Tex Mex restaurant will bring its creamy garlic dip to the Plaza.

This week’s announcement that a new restaurant chain was taking an empty location on the Country Club Plaza finally answered the question “Who will take over the old Figlio Italian Restaurant space?”

The answer is Chuy’s, a popular Tex Mex operation based in Austin, Texas. The Plaza Chuy’s will be the first outpost of the 31-year-old chain restaurant in the Kansaas City metro. Famous in Texas for the distinctive kitschy interior design, the restaurant is scheduled to open in the former Figlio space at 209 West 46th Terrace this autumn. That dining area was created by the J.C. Nichols company for a short-lived Glibert/Robinson pan-Asian restaurant concept, Alice Wong’s, in 1986. Figlio – initially opened as a franchise of a Minneapolis-based restaurant and saloon – opened in the late 1980s and was later operated by the Kansas City Haddad Restaurant Group; it closed earlier this year.
Chuy’s, a casual dining venue known for its large portions and family-friendly environment, will be a good fit for the Country Club Plaza, according to one Kansas City native who has lived in Austin for the last 15 years.

“I worked at the old Annie’s Santa Fe back in the day,” she says. “Hell yes it will be a good fit.”