Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery, or So They Say

I had to do a photo shoot at Chuy's about three weeks ago. It's a chain restaurant featuring Mexican or Tex-Mex food, and the décor is punctuated with lots of vintage items, like the back end of this car, for instance, and old Formica tables. It's meant to throw back to old Mexican restaurants of yore, I guess. But this Chuy's is in a brand new strip mall that isn't even finished yet, on the northeast side of town. Nothing much vintage over there, that's for sure. If you want to see the real thing, hit up one of my favorite restaurants, the Blue Bonnet in Denver, which first opened in the 1930s, so it really is vintage, not cunning or cute or trying too hard, but just plain old. And colorful to boot. The décor evolved organically over the decades. It's almost like the interior designer at Chuy's went to the Blue Bonnet and decided to just copy it. Oh, well. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or so they say!