Huntsville restaurant legend passes away: ‘Your legacy will live on’ (2024)

Oscar Gutierrez, the local restaurant stalwart who opened Bandito Burrito Co. in Huntsville in 1990, has passed away.

He was 74.

Gutierrez died in his sleep Saturday morning from complications from diabetes, his daughter Rachel told AL.com. Gutierrez had had four children with his wife Deborah: Rebecca Gutierrez Mills, Rachel Gutierrez, Heather Gutierrez, and Nathan Gutierrez.

Located at 3017 Governors Drive SW in Huntsville, the restaurant offers classic plates and original family recipes with a large beer selection, margaritas and other favorites that have kept it a mainstay in North Alabama.

Friends of Gutierrez and fans of his long-beloved restaurant took to social media to share condolences for a man they called “icon” and “legend” of the North Alabama area who served the community with not only great food but a place where artists felt welcome to work and explore their creativity by performing at his business.

“Rest in peace Oscar Gutierrez you created an entire culture on governors drive,” Jason Pauls wrote on Facebook. “You will be missed but your legacy will live on.”

“He was a great man,” Pauls told AL.com.

David Hewitt of Huntsville said he tried to have dinner at Bandito Burrito this weekend and didn’t know why the restaurant had suddenly closed until he checked online to discover “we have lost the incomparable father of lost children, purveyor of cool and Huntsville legend.”

“RIP Oscar Gutierrez, you always brightened any visit I had to your establishment when I was able to see you,” Hewitt posted online. “I have been a regular for 28 years, you were always so cool to me and my college friends back in the day. Your spirit will live on in all the people you have had a positive impact on around here.”

A customer also left a bouquet of flowers on the colorful bench outside the restaurant to honor Gutierrez. Written in black marker on the clear plastic wrapping is “Love you. Miss You,” with a heart drawn underneath.

READ: The story behind a mysteriously named and beloved Huntsville burrito

For decades, Gutierrez would regularly hold court at the big circular table right next the cash register. He liked to sit here to can keep an eye out the front windows and also step up if the cashier needed help.

AL.com’s Matt Wake wrote in 2016: “If Gutierrez would’ve been born a few hundred years earlier he would’ve made a great pirate. He’s a goateed rascal. On a recent Tuesday afternoon at Bandito, he’s wearing a pink button-up shirt with wayfarer sunglasses hanging from the third button down. He’s sipping a Miller High Life. There is literally no telling what will come out of Gutierrez’s mouth at any moment. ‘I had one lady say something about the ‘Juan Beeg Deener,’' Gutierrez says. He’s referring to a popular Bandito combo meal that includes an enchilada, chile relleno, tamale, beans and rice. “She said, ‘Well that’s not very nice for the Mexican people.’ Well I’m Mexican so shut up! I don’t care. That’s why I like having my own place. I make my own rules.’”

Bandito customers frequently greeted the owner as they came in. He would reply with a mischievous grin, a fluttering wave and a spirited “hell-o.”

Gutierrez opened Bandito in October of 1990 with $15,000 and some pots and pans he brought from his home. He took out a second-mortgage to get the restaurant going. Bandito is housed in a small space, previously home to a Church’s Fried Chicken, which had been “boarded up for a few years.” The earth-tone booths in Bandito’s dining room today date back to the building’s Church’s era.

Early on, the Bandito staff consisted of just Gutierrez, his three teenage daughters, Rebecca, Rachel and Heather, and a couple non-family employees. (He also had a son, Nathan, since deceased.) “Had all my kids working for free,” Oscar said. “I owe them the world.” Rachel Gutierrez was 16 at the time Bandito opened. She took customers’ orders, wiped tables, swept, made hot sauce and whatever else was needed.

Oscar said Bandito’s now iconic punk-rock vibe was a result of his kids, some of whom were into punk music. “That was when you didn’t see very much pink hair and tattoos and stuff,” he told AL.com. “Well one of my daughters had pink hair. We need to find somebody to work. Well, what about so and so? ‘They’ve got tattoos and stuff.’ I don’t care. I just need somebody to work. You can get those people that look all nice and neat to show up on time, but they’re not good workers.

“If you let people be who they are they feel so much better and they’ll work so much harder.”

Bandito’s business gradually built up over time, now still serving many of its original customers. Their children who have grown up to be regulars as well.

Gutierrez grew up in San Bernardino, Calif., where he said during his time there were “probably more taco places than hamburger places.” He learned how to cook at age 14 after his father got him a job at a fried chicken joint called Lucky Wishbone.

Later in his teens in San Bernardino, he met a young woman named Deborah, and the two began dating. As Deborah’s father was retiring from the Air Force, their family considered moving to either Seattle or Huntsville. They chose the latter. And Gutierrez moved to Huntsville, too. “I followed a girl - you know how that goes,” he said in 2016. “I could’ve ended up in Seattle.” Oscar and Deborah eventually wed.

Gutierrez arrived in Huntsville on July 27, 1969. Soon after, he got a job cooking at El Palacio, the Memorial Parkway eatery believed to have been the first Mexican restaurant in Huntsville. In the early-70s he joined the Air Force but received a medical discharge after being diagnosed with bleeding ulcers, he said in a previous AL.com interview. By the mid-1970s, he had started his own Mexican place, called El Chico, in Rogersville.

Gutierrez opened a second restaurant, which he called Los Amigos, in Athens. “That one didn’t pan out for nothing.” Throughout the years he’d periodically return to El Palacio to work, and at one point he managed the place, he said.

Shortly after Bandito opened, Huntsville realtor Jim Parker gave it a shot.

“I came in here and there was hardly anyone in here and I sat down and had some of the best food I ever had,” Parker, also a successful songwriter, told AL.com in 2016. “I was raised in Amarillo. And I’ve always loved Mexican food. Ninety percent of what happened here early in the business was Oscar. His food was outstanding. But his personality was so inviting it was just a great thing to come in here. He would remember your name and what you ordered. We hit up a big friendship.”

“When it’s crowded in here you can sit down at any table,” Parker said. “You can ask somebody, ‘You mind if I sit here?’ ‘No.’ Because it’s a community feeling. And Oscar’s responsible for that.”

Bandito has long been a magnet for musicians, both as customers and employees. Helen Faulkner, a drummer in local bands, worked there for years and said in 2016 that Gutierrez and his business were artist-friendly.

“It’s easy to work here if you’re a touring musician or you have shows,” Faulkner said, “because Oscar’s very understanding if you need off work to go do that. And you can always come back and work here even if you’ve been gone awhile. Even people that have worked here like 20 years ago and haven’t been here for like five years can always go, ‘Hey can I pick up a shift?’ That’s just how this place is.”

Bandito employees don’t just work together they party together. And that included Oscar, who often accompanied his staff to go sing karaoke at local watering hole Moody Monday’s. The Bandito owner’s karaoke jams included Joe co*cker’s version of “With a Little Help From My Friends,” with a couple of employees joining in on background vocals. “That’s our closer,” Oscar said in 2016. “We bring the house down with that.”

On Sunday, Jeff Cotten shared a story on Facebook about when he moved from New Orleans to Huntsville in 1999, when he knew very few people in town. “I only knew that the locals told me I had to try some burrito made with green beans,” he wrote, referring to Bandito’s Green Bean, a burrito filled with beans, cheese and green sauce. “I walked into an empty restaurant and sat down, lonely.

“Oscar Gutierrez came out from the back and asked me why the long face. I told him I was home sick, and that I was originally from near New Orleans. He told me to sit tight and not go anywhere. About 20 minutes later he came out with a plate full of beignets he fried up in the back. I’ve shared this story a hundred times. I hope to share it a hundred more.”