Gator Boy is back at Cajun Kitchen.
The popular brunch spot just reopened its original Goleta location (6831 Hollister Avenue) with a revamped look, including a new set of murals by a familiar artist, Curt Crawshaw a k a “Hello Coyote,” who brought back a long-lost character from Cajun Kitchen’s past.
Gator Boy’s story goes back to 2013, when Cajun Kitchen’s co-owners Juan and Richard Jimenez commissioned Crawshaw to come up with a public piece of art to help them spruce up the identity for the family business that their father, Richard, Sr., had operated since the mid-’80s. Together, they decided on the iconic Gator Boy, a serious-faced young man sipping a steaming drink atop a scaly alligator.
The mural took up an entire outside wall of Cajun Kitchen’s downtown Santa Barbara location, and quickly became a hit with customers and passersby alike. But within a few months, the city caught wind of the technically unpermitted piece of art and asked the Jimenez family to take it down. After a long public battle and a community effort to save the mural, the city ordered Gator Boy removed in 2015…