No, it’s not the chain.
Downtown Southern Pines will be home to a new local restaurant named Chuy’s. It might share a name with a Tex-Mex chain, but it’s named for the owner of Casa Garcia in Carthage.
“My real name is Jesús, but I graduated from Pinecrest in 1993, and growing up here I ended up with the nickname Jesse. In Mexico everyone who has the name Jesús is called Chuy,” says Jesse Garcia, who founded Casa Garcia 17 years ago.
- “We’ve always wanted to venture into Southern Pines, but over the years we’ve never lucked out at finding a place,” he says. When realtor Sherry McQuage heard Scott and Karen Margolis were closing their restaurant in Harbour Place, owned by David Harbour, she called Jesse.
Jesse says Chuy’s will be more modern than his Carthage restaurant, which has a “typical Southern Mexico color scheme.” A menu is still in the works, but we do know there will be a full bar. An opening date has not been set.
