This story is from the December 2025 issue of Reporter Newspapers, marking the 20th anniversary of the City of Sandy Springs.
El Azteca has been a staple in Sandy Springs for more than four decades. Victor Macias’s parents tethered themselves to the community more than 45 years ago, raising their children in Sandy Springs and opening the first El Azteca there, long before the Atlanta bedroom community became a city.
Sandy Springs is where it all began for El Azteca, today a local Mexican restaurant chain with three locations. It’s become a great source of family pride that the Roswell Road restaurant still exists, as Sandy Springs and its burgeoning dining scene grew up around it. (Now the seventh-largest city in Georgia, Sandy Springs and Atlanta combined account for two-thirds of the more than 20,000 restaurants in the state.)
Macias attended Spalding Drive Elementary and spent most of his childhood in Sandy Springs. His formative years unwittingly paralleled the then-fledgling city, which incorporated when Macias was in middle school.
He remembers his parents talking about the incorporation of Sandy Springs and what it might mean for El Azteca. By 2005, when Sandy Springs became a city, El Azteca had been in business for nearly 25 years.
“I’ve seen Sandy Springs and the restaurant scene change so much. My parents chose Sandy Springs because there were hardly any restaurants when it opened in 1981. The community needed restaurants,” Macias said. “Back then, there weren’t as many Mexican restaurants as there are today, so El Azteca was a lot of people’s introduction to Mexican and Tex-Mex food in Sandy Springs.”
Macias’s father, Javier, moved to Atlanta from Chicago in the late 1970s to work at his uncle’s restaurant, El Toro, on Roswell Road. But in 1981, Javier and his wife decided to strike out on their own, opening El Azteca near present-day Rumi’s Kitchen, before taking over the property now home to Mellow Mushroom. In 2000, El Azteca moved again to its present location at the Lowe’s complex, a half mile south on Roswell Road.
The Macias family lived and worked in Sandy Springs for years, eventually moving to Johns Creek in the early 2000s. But El Azteca on Roswell Road served as the family’s anchor to Sandy Springs, even after the business expanded to multiple metro Atlanta locations.
“[Roswell Road] is where we see generations of families returning to dine. I’ve seen people’s kids and grandchildren grow up and bring their own families,” Macias said, who serves as El Azteca’s Director of Operations and owns the Perimeter Center location on Peachtree-Dunwoody Road. “We like to call El Azteca the Mexican ‘Cheers’ because we know our regulars’ names and their orders. We’re part of their lives.”
Family drives everything behind El Azteca. It continues to be a family-owned and operated business, and where Macias and his sister learned the restaurant industry, working as food runners, servers, and hosts during high school. He watched his parents grow the family’s lone restaurant into 10 locations. They’ve since scaled back to just three locations in Buckhead, Perimeter Center, and the original Roswell Road restaurant.
Macias’s sister holds a degree in hospitality management. The plan had always been for her to take over the business. When she decided to prioritize raising a family, Macias stepped up to help his parents run the restaurants.
With a degree in business administration and marketing, Macias became a manager and shadowed El Azteca’s Director of Operations, a title he earned in 2016. His parents turned over the opening and ownership of the Perimeter Center El Azteca to Macias three years ago, where he built the restaurant from the ground up.
“Family-owned businesses don’t have as much support once founders get older or retire. Maybe their children don’t want to carry on the business, or they never had any children. So these businesses close after years in communities because there’s no one to keep them going,” Macias said. “My parents were lucky we grew up in the restaurants and wanted to keep being a part of them.”
As a second-generation owner overseeing the daily operations of all three of his family’s restaurants, Macias knows that for El Azteca to endure, it needs to evolve. He recently added new dishes like tortas and chiles rellenos to the menu. The bar features new non-alcoholic drinks and cocktails like a lychee margarita and Mexican Old Fashioned. Margaritas incorporate top-shelf tequilas, fresh juices, and agave syrup.
Macias also pared down the combination meal options from 30 to 10. That doesn’t mean, however, someone can’t come in and order the number 25.
“We have cooks who’ve been there for decades and can still make a number 25. I may not know what a 25 is, but someone in that restaurant does and will make it,” said Macias.
Despite stepping back from the day-to-day running of El Azteca, his father keeps a sharp eye on things. Macias is glad for his wise counsel, but finds his father open to new ideas for keeping El Azteca fresh and current.
“El Azteca still has the majority of the day-one recipes on the menu, and certain entrees have never changed. As I’ve taken over more, I’m focusing on keeping the original concept, but adding to it, making it more now,” he said.
In 2026, El Azteca will turn 45 on Roswell Road. Macias wants to make sure it survives in Sandy Springs for another 45. The family just resigned the lease, locking El Azteca in on Roswell Road for at least another decade.
With the Perimeter Center restaurant humming along, Macias can concentrate on shoring up the family’s flagship restaurant on Roswell Road, which includes some much-needed updating and a facelift.
“If we needed to leave that space, we would always find a way to be on Roswell Road in Sandy Springs,” said Macias of the future. “It’s our home base and reminds us of how far we’ve come. El Azteca would not be what it is today if it wasn’t for the people of Sandy Springs.”
This story is from the December 2025 issue of Reporter Newspapers, marking the 20th anniversary of the City of Sandy Springs.