Ever been to Chuy's in Austin?

What an odd way to start off a blog/essay/whatever-this-is, right? How many of you have ever heard of Chuy's in Austin ? Let's see some hands. Hmmm, not too good. How many of you have been to Austin? (That would be the one in Texas, just in case there are any others scattered around the country.) OK, that's a little better. How many of you have heard of Austin, Texas? Finally! Now we're getting someplace, so let's talk about Chuy's.

Chuy's is a restaurant, or more properly restaurants. I think it's turned into kind of a chain (darn it!), but it started out as one restaurant in Little Old Austin. They serve pretty good TexMex food, and are a fun place to go. In the Old Days, when there were only a couple of them around and those only in Austin, you could actually tell your server how spicy you wanted your food to be. Those days are long gone, but everybody in Austin and surrounding environs knows about Chuy's and has, in all likelihood, been to one. Jenny and I hang out at the one on North Lamar, a fact which will become significant in a few minutes, although you really need to go to the original---the one on Restaurant Row---to understand the innate coolness of the thing. Add it to your list of to-dos when you next come to Austin.

At this juncture you would be well within your rights to ask why in the world I'm telling you about a restaurant in a column that's ostensibly about stuff related to quilting and fabrics. It's nonsensical, right? Well, no; it really makes perfectly good sense if you look at the world the same way that I do, and therein lies a tale.

Almost every Saturday afternoon, pretty much without fail, I drive in to Austin to go to King's Hobbies, my favorite aviation-related hobby shop in the universe. I'll spend an hour or two there and then go to supper with friends. That's supper's almost inevitably at Chuy's. Some of the wait staff know Brad, Brian, myself, and, now, Jenny, by first name, and we have a lot of fun while we're there. There was a time, not that long ago, when Jenny had yet to come into my life. In those days the Chuy's Run generally consisted of just Brian and me, or maybe Brian and Brad. We would usually get over there around four (that would be 1600 hrs local for anybody who keeps time that way) because by so doing we could beat the Saturday Night Supper Crowd, which anyone who'd ever been to Chuy's (or any other Austin restaurant) would describe as A Very Good Thing to Do.

Right, then! Let's jump back a year or so. It's four PM (or 1600 hrs local), and Brian and I are pulling into the parking lot at Chuy's on North Lamar. There's generally no lack of parking places at that time, but on the particular day we're discussing the lot is jammed. People are parked everywhere. We eventually find parking places and go into the restaurant, where we actually have to wait a while for a table. Now wait just a ding-danged minute; this ain't right! Chuy's is never like this at four in the afternoon. Where'd all these people come from, anyway?

That's the part where Brian remembered that there's a small civic center across the street. It's usually a busy place, what with gun shows, car shows, collectables fairs and the like, but none of those things had ever caused Chuy's to be packed like it is. What's up? Well, we started to surmise (a fancy word, that) what it could be that was causing our dining discomfiture. Let's see now; politicians? No. A gathering of medieval huntsmen? No. Sailors? No. We could hear those people talking all around us, but what we were hearing didn't make a lot of sense. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes passed, and we finally decided to do what we should've done in the first place---we asked our server.

"Hey, what's going on here?"

"Whaddayamean?"

"All the people. What's going on here?"

"Quilters."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, it's a quilt show. They do it every year. All these people are quilters. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Uh yeah, sure. Cool. Right."

"It's only once a year and then they'll go away. Eat your supper."

"Yes Ma'am."

And we did. Ate our supper, I mean, and then we went away. While I was driving home I thought about where I'd just been and what I'd just experienced. (It's a fairly long drive back to Blanco.) The conclusion I arrived at wasn't much of a much, and didn't require a whole lot of thinking. It was a simple thing---there are a lot of quilters out there. They completely filled the civic center; put more people in there than the train guys, car guys, gun guys, flower guys, reptile guys, or any other kind of guys had ever done, maybe more than all those folks put together. It was impressive, and maybe a little scary. Could quilters be conspiring to take over the world, or at least Austin? Nah, probably not. There were a bunch of them though, and I expect they'll be back in another month or two. The big difference this time will be that Jenny will probably be there with FTDF, and I'll probably be with her. In there. In that civic center. With the quilters. Yikes!

But maybe it'll be easier to get a table at Chuy's that day!

   hasta bye bye,

      phil