good restaurant .... bad news

Just Chillin' is a quirky new restaurant on the west end of Ajijic. It is owned by three enterprising young Mexicans Juan Carlo, his wife Rene' and her sister Paulina. The restaurant opened several months ago and was an instant hit. The food is good, the prices are some of the best in town and they are all super friendly. Just Chillin' has found the recipe for success.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the restaurant was robbed and vandalized. I went there late Tuesday and saw the destruction first hand. The place was destroyed. All the food from the fridge and liquor was stolen, cabinet doors were ripped from their hinges, everything was turned upside down and huge piles of papers, bottles, decorations were piled on the floor. They even destroyed the blow-up penguin which is their trademark. This is devastating to the owners as you can imagine.

The worst part is it is the work of a competing restaurant. The owners have received threats like "get out of town, you don't belong here" and "you are stealing business from our restaurant". These threats began shortly after their opening but it has been quiet for a couple months. Just this weekend LCS asked Juan Carlos to manage the snack bar. This may have been the tipping point and the competing restaurant or restaurants took this cowardly action. Instead of raising their own standards, the perpetrators decided to try and destroy the competition.

I, for one will support this restaurant even more and show the criminals that this tactic doesn't work, if anything it will backfire on them. I hope everyone will support Just Chillin' and let them know the local community is behind them. These young entrepreneurs don't deserve anything but love and support.

I am so sorry to hear this. It had become one of my favourite restaurants. I hope they are able to recover and I will support them even more. I also hope the name of the competing restaurant becomes public.

A lot of cars in the parking lot today as we drove by - looks like they are open again!

We went there yesterday and enjoyed ourselves immensely.  We had been meaning to go even before the "trouble" but this just gave us extra incentive to offer our little bit of support.  We sat beside the penguin.
The hosts/hostesses were delightful. Always smiling and one of the sisters stopped to chat and welcome us even though they were quite busy.  We even liked the music, a combination of country and blues.  The place has a young, hip vibe.
DH had fettuccine alfredo and I had tacos cancino (sp?).  The food was great, nicely presented and reasonably priced.  
I often am reluctant to try a white wine at the more casual establishments as it is often a disappointment. Not that I'm all that hoity-toity, but I do like a nice glass of wine. They served a nice wine and at $20p and a generous portion, it was a pleasant surprise.  We got hugs all around when we left.
We will definitely be back with family in tow.

nice review ....

I am glad to see they have rebounded and are back open. I will make it a point of supporting them more then I normally would in the future