El Arroyo: the sign outside is more famous than the restaurant
How can a large noticeboard in the parking lot be more famous than the restaurant itself? So famous that there are mugs, books and mouse mats featuring it? Look at the texts on the sign and you’ll understand: El Arroyo is hilarious.
Hospitality with humor: a somewhat difficult combination. I worked at a beach bar where the owner thought he was incredibly funny. He also liked putting his cringe-worthy outbursts on the daily menu. ‘Be wise, eat a saucijs,’ it would proudly say next to the sausage rolls. Painful, right? And next to the mixed grill on the menu: ‘The longest skewer with the thickest meat.’ Shudder. But still, it was that or borrowing the maximum student grant, so I had to hand that menu to guests with a straight face.
Craving tacos
El Arroyo, a Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas, gets it right. The restaurant normally serves Tex-Mex dishes and shares a piece of wisdom every week on the large sign in front of the restaurant. The beach gonna get whatever body I give it, it says. That’s how it is, and it immediately makes you crave tacos, tortillas and enchiladas. And not some ordinary meat skewer from my student job, thank you very much.
Having a margarita delivered
The restaurant is currently closed because of coronavirus, but the little pearls of wisdom keep coming. Fortunately, the owners of El Arroyo can still earn a little extra from the photobooks, mugs and other merchandise made from their funny signs. And to keep morale high, the bartender at El Arroyo isn’t sitting completely idle either: they have set up a delivery service, with their margaritas as the bestseller.
