The Upstairs Room Above Charlie Brown's Is Getting Its Next Mexican Restaurant
November 5, 2026
November 5, 2026
At street level on Euclid Avenue, 816 is the door to Charlie Brown's, with its walls of books, its sofas and its deck out back. Climb one floor and the address becomes 818, the room above. For most of the past four decades, that upstairs room has served Mexican food. Its next tenant is already renovating.
El Mariachi Mexican Restaurant, now at Rose Street and Avenue of Champions in Coliseum Plaza, plans to move into the space above Charlie Brown's, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported on Oct. 21. Owner Hernan Leon told the paper he hopes to move in by the end of December or the beginning of January. The room has been empty since Papi's closed there in April.
On its own, that's ordinary restaurant turnover. The building's history explains why the second floor keeps going to the same kind of restaurant, and why that pattern has outlasted a change of ownership downstairs.
When the building first opened as a restaurant, the two floors did different jobs. Upstairs was an upscale dining room serving prime rib. The downstairs lounge was mostly a bar and barely served food, according to the history in a 2023 Herald-Leader profile of Charlie Brown's.
The years that shaped the building:
The 1987 lease is the date that matters most for the upstairs. Before it, one business ran both floors. After it, the building held two restaurants, one on each floor, and the second floor settled into a cuisine it has kept through every tenant since.
The swap also changed how the building works. The fine-dining room left the top floor, and the bar downstairs gradually became the kitchen that feeds University of Kentucky students, local business people and neighborhood families at lunch, dinner and late night, as the profile puts it. Both floors now serve food. They just serve different food.
A lease only lasts as long as the people on both sides want it to. Downstairs, Charlie Brown's has changed hands only twice in roughly half a century, the Herald-Leader reported in 2023. Fuller owned it for about 40 years. When he sold, the buyers said they planned to keep things the way he'd built them.
The menu and the decor stayed, the new owners told the Herald-Leader. That meant the books, which have been there almost from the start, and the sofas, which have been replaced over the years but always with more sofas. The stained glass panels made by artist Frank Close stayed too. So did the Bacon Cheddar Burger and Emily's Chicken, a grilled blackened chicken breast with barbecue sauce, Ranch and cheddar that the paper said has been on the menu forever.
"Some people have come in and had no idea things had changed ownership, which is pretty much the way we wanted it," Brothers told the Herald-Leader.
When the owners of the ground floor treat changing nothing as the goal, the second floor doesn't have to start over every time a tenant leaves. The building stays the same, the neighbors downstairs stay the same, and the room upstairs keeps the cuisine it has had since the late 1980s. El Mariachi isn't filling an empty space so much as taking over a role the building has had for decades.
The move started a mile or so north, on campus. The University of Kentucky approved buying Coliseum Plaza at Rose Street and Avenue of Champions on Feb. 20, 2026, according to the Herald-Leader. El Mariachi still has a year left on its lease there, Leon told the paper, but when the Euclid space came open he decided he had to act.
He described the university's purchase as "a gut-punch" and explained the decision this way:
"I don't want to lose the business, because we're actually doing really well there. But we didn't want to lose the opportunity to take this spot."
Some Chevy Chase residents have already tried his food. El Mariachi had a booth at this year's Chevy Chase Street Fair, held on a Saturday in late August. "We participated in the Chevy Chase Street Fair, kept it simple and we had a great outcome," Leon told the Herald-Leader. "People really welcomed us, seemed super excited about us coming in there."
The family-owned restaurant has two other Lexington locations, at 1916 Justice Dr. in Hamburg and 115 Towne Center Dr. in Meadowthorpe. The Euclid room will be its location closest to campus once the Coliseum Plaza lease ends, and it stays within reach of the same student and university crowd the downstairs kitchen has fed since the 1980s.
"We're excited about moving into Chevy Chase. All the local businesses have been really welcoming," Leon told the Herald-Leader. The paper listed the neighbors he'll have within a short walk of the stairs:
Cajun food, ramen, a butcher-driven kitchen, a beer bar, Mediterranean, ice cream. The stretch already offers a wide mix in a few blocks, and Mexican is the one cuisine the building at 816 and 818 has reliably supplied for almost 40 years. With El Mariachi upstairs, the block gets that cuisine back.
El Mariachi will open on a street that has spent the year under construction. The city scheduled overnight final paving on Euclid Avenue and High Street from Sept. 30 through Oct. 5. That included closures at the Euclid and Ashland intersection and on Euclid between South Ashland Avenue and High Street, according to a City of Lexington release. The city said the work, done by ATS Construction for Kentucky American Water, completes a water main replacement that began last year.
Over on Romany Road, the old Kroger site at 344 Romany is becoming a Publix of nearly 38,000 square feet, Smiley Pete reported when the store was announced, and FOX 56 put it at about 40,000. The Chevy Chase Neighborhood Association's construction page describes two levels of underground parking and expects the store to open sometime in 2027. A March update on that page estimated June 2027.
So El Mariachi's planned arrival at the turn of the year comes between two other changes in the neighborhood. Euclid's water main project has reached final paving, and the grocery store is still more than a season away. The room at 818 Euclid is getting the same kind of restaurant it has had since 1987, with a new owner bringing the menu.
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