As of this week, it’s rubble. But in the ’80s, this was the most happening spot in Wichita
A moment of silence, please, for a Wichita restaurant building that for two decades provided Wichitans with pina coladas, chimichangas and total “salsafication.”
Today, though, that building is being carted away as piles of rubble, taking years of margarita-laced memories with it.
The former Chi-Chi’s building at 511 S. West Street is now history. Last week, heavy construction equipment was all over the now-empty site, preparing it for the construction of a new Casey’s General Store.
No one was likely surprised at the news that the building, which was most recently home to a crab restaurant, was about to meet its end. It’s been literally crumbling to the ground for years, and during its last days, a wheel-less car sat jacked up in the empty parking lot — a final sad scene marking the end of a once hopping Wichita hotspot.
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But many people in Wichita remember when the building was in its heydey and attracted big crowds willing to wait in long lines for a table at Wichita’s most popular Tex-Mex restaurant.
Chi-Chi’s entered the Wichita market in the late 1970s, and at one point, there were two — the one on West Street and another at 6160 E. Central. But as tastes changed, sales started to plummet. The east-side restaurant was turned into a Hometown Buffet in 1993. (Wichita Brewing Company’s event center operates there now.)
The west-side Chi-Chi’s held on until June of 1999, when Rand Graphics bought the building and the restaurant closed.
If you were around in the 1980s, though, you saw Chi-Chi’s at its best. My friend, Sandi Schreck — who went on to make her career as a successful real estate agent in Wichita — was a single mom in the early 1980s trying to pay her way through college at Wichita State University.
She got a job as a cocktail waitress at the west Chi-Chi’s — which was the busier of the two, she said. She kept that job from around 1980 until 1986, and she made good money.
Back then, Chi-Chi’s was the place to be, and people would crowd in for an after-work margarita or three. Waits for tables were long. Schreck remembers that she built up her muscles carrying 15 margaritas at a time balanced on a tray.
People loved the Tex-Mex fare the chain touted in its cheesy television commercials as “Mexican food for American tastes.” The chimichangas and the nachos were particularly popular, and the place always had a fun, vibrant atmosphere, Schreck said.
She also remembers a time in the early 1990s when that section of West Street was the place everyone headed for dinner. During Chi-Chi’s west-side peak, Black-eyed Pea and Willie C’s also were drawing Rock Road-sized crowds of diners to the area.
Later, lots of rumors swirled around Wichita about scary incidents that may or may not have happened in the building as it deteriorated. Chi-Chi’s was long gone from the Wichita market when the chain filed for bankruptcy in 2003. That same year, its restaurants were the site of the largest hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history. At least four people died and hundreds were sickened in Pennsylvania.
Today, Chi-Chi’s restaurants still operate overseas, but there are none in the United States. The last 65 locations closed in 2004.
So was Schreck sad to see the old Chi-Chi’s building reduced to rubble?
No, she says. It was time.
“Every time I drove by lately, I thought, ‘Oh my god that’s so awful,’” she said. “It was looking pretty shoddy. It’s time to move on.”
This story was originally published November 25, 2020 at 12:54 PM.
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