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Scott Whitten, a regular at Bandito Burrito in Huntsville, bites down on a taco. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)

There's a photo of the rapper and actor known as Ice Cube affixed to the ice dispenser on Bandito Burrito's soda fountain.

It's genius restaurant humor.

That strategically placed photo epitomizes the funky, punky atmosphere that's helped make Bandito Burrito an Alabama restaurant landmark.

Of course, the fresh, affordable and lively Mexican food has played a role, too. But while there are many local restaurants serving enjoyable Mexican, none of them offer this kind of edgy-cool atmosphere. It feels like even the tacos should have tattoos at Bandito. Certainly most of the employees do.

The restaurant's original location, 3017 Governors Drive S.W. in Huntsville, calls to mind the love child of an illicit tryst between a taco stand and a record store. Photos of underground bands, like Southern Culture on the Skids, who have eaten here and other kitschy doo-dads dot the dining room walls. Chili-shaped lights dangle overhead. Flyers for an array of local entertainment gigs hang in a row near the cash register, which is neighbored by a tip-jar adorned with comedian Pee Wee Herman's image.

A photo of Ice Cube affixed to the ice dispenser on Bandito Burrito's soda fountain. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)

Bandito owner Oscar Gutierrez regularly holds court at the big circular table right next the cash register. He likes to sit here so he can keep an eye out the front windows and also step up if the cashier needs help.

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."

Later on, out of nowhere, Gutierrez gestures back at Bandito's kitchen and says, "People sometimes say, 'I don't see any Mexicans in here?' Well, you don't have to look it to cook it. And if you're looking for Mexican cooks you can go to Five Guys or any Chinese buffet." Bandito customers frequently greet the owner as they come in. He replies with a mischievous grin, a fluttering wave and a spirited "hell-o."

Bandito Burrito owner Oscar Gutierrez. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)

Bandito's beginnings

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.

His then-new restaurant needed a sign so Gutierrez went to a nearby sheet metal shop. He purchased a sheet and cut that into three pieces and bolted them together to fit the preexisting oval-shaped frame atop a pole in front of the building. Gutierrez, who'd never really painted much before, went to work with some spray paint. He fashioned a cactus and sunset scene. "I just got a bunch of colors to kind of make it fade," he says. "I thought it will work for a year. If we make it we'll be able to afford a new sign." More than a quarter century later, that same sign is still out front of Bandito - rust, dents and all. "People go, 'You need a new sign,'" Gutierrez says. "Why? People say, 'Look at it.' Well you did, so it worked."

Bandito Burrito is shown around the time the restaurant first opened, in 1990. (Courtesy photo)

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 has a son, Nathan.) "Had all my kids working for free," Oscar says. "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.

"Back then people weren't as open to look for hole in the wall places like us," Rachel says. "People would pull in the parking lot and look at our menu through the window because they didn't want to commit to coming inside. Many times my dad would go out to the car and persuade them to come in. A lot of those people ended up being our regulars."

Oscar says 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," Oscar says. "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."

As fun as it was for the Gutierrez sisters to work somewhere they also got to hang with all their friends - because most of their friends either worked or ate at Bandito - there were also sacrifices. The sisters had to work weekends and some school nights. Rachel would sometimes do her homework in the restaurant's back office if things were slow out front. "For many years we were closed on Sundays because my mom said it was the only day we could all be together as a family," Rachel says.

Bandito's business gradually built up over time. Not only does the restaurant still serve many of its original customers, but those customers' children have grown up to be regulars as well.

Rachel is now a full-time mom with two daughters of her own, ages 3 and 8. She still helps out at Bandito when she can by ordering t-shirts, designing logos and doing the menu boards. "I'm sure I'll be back working at the counter once my youngest daughter starts school," Rachel says. "I feel a little out of touch when I'm not there. I miss working with my friends that work there, talking to the regulars, even looking at the flyers to see what's happening."

The weathered, iconic Bandito Burrito sign. (File photo/Eric Schultz)

Southern California roots

Oscar Gutierrez grew up in San Bernardino, a Southern California city that was home of the very first McDonald's restaurant. The Hells Angels motorcycle gang also got its start in the area. Oscar says during his time living in San Bernardino 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. "We cut a chicken a certain way where it was almost like a boneless piece but it had the wishbone in it. That was like the signature of the place."

Later in his teens in San Bernardino, Oscar 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 Oscar moved to Huntsville too. "I followed a girl - you know how that goes," he says now. "I could've ended up in Seattle." Oscar and Deborah eventually wed.

A new start in Alabama

He arrived in Huntsville on July 27. 1969. The next day Oscar 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. By the mid-70s, Oscar had started his own Mexican place, called El Chico, in Rogersville. He'd opened El Chico with a six-month lease but when his landlord "saw that I was doing a lot of business he doubled the rent. I could have easily paid for it but it just clicked my clicker. I used to have a really short fuse. You think I got one now? It's a lot longer than it was. I just took the key off my key ring and threw it at him."

Later on Oscar opened his second restaurant, which he called Los Amigos, this time 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 says.

He hopped around a bit too. "Because I found out every place you go you get paid a little more." One of those hops landed him at a Rogersville lodge managed by a large company. "One time I was working there," Oscar says of working at that lodge, "and everyone's shaking in their boots because some regional manager big wheel came in there. We were busy. Friday night or something. And the guy walks in there and says, 'Fix me this, this, this and this.' And I said, 'I'm going to take care of this first because these people are paying for this food.' And everybody said, 'Oh, you've had it. You're out of here!' So they call me up in the office later on and the (regional manager) said, 'You know you're the first person to ever say that to me. And I've been waiting to hear this. We're going to give you a raise.'"

Gutierrez quit on the spot.

"I told you about my fuse!" he says now with cackle.

Bandito Burrito regular Scott Whitten. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)

The regulars

A week or two weeks after Gutierrez first opened Bandito, Huntsville realtor Jim Parker drove by the restaurant on the way to the office. And he kept driving. "Look where that thing is. I don't know," Parker remembers thinking at the time. "Because the area was questionable in the minds of a lot of Huntsvillians."

But eventually he decided to give Bandito 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," says Parker, who is also a local singer/songwriter. "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." Early on at Bandito, Parker would order Bandito's No Carne Burrito, made with beans, rice, cheese, lettuce and salsa. He later gravitated to Chicken Chalupas.

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

In the mid-90s, Kay Moore was on a company volleyball team that played games at Stone Middle School, which is located on the other side of the Governors Drive and Clinton Avenue intersection from Bandito. "And afterwards we would come over here and eat," Moore, a physicist, says now. "And ever since then I've been hooked." On average, she eats at Bandito a couple times a week, often ordering a Green Bean Burrito, a signature item comprised of beans, cheese and green sauce.

The Green Bean's origin story? "Oh I just like green sauce," Oscar says. Asked where Bandito's recipes came from, Oscar simply points at his head.

There is a story behind the Raven Burrito, an item from the restaurant's extensive vegetarian menu. "It was way early in the game and there were a couple of cab companies around real close in the area," Oscar says. "We were always getting cabbies come in to eat. There was one girl, she was a cabbie, and her name was Raven. She always used to get a no cheese, beans and rice burrito. She'd come in and pull up and we got to the point where she'd just hold her finger up if she wanted one or if she wanted two. By the time she got in to the counter it was waiting on her. We ended up putting it on the menu."

Local carpenter Scott Whitten is another Bandito regular. On this afternoon, he's wearing a tie-dye t-shirt and chomping down on two beef tacos before digging into the bean burrito with green sauce on his plate. "It's the best fast food in town in my opinion," Whitten says.

The offshoots

In addition to the original Governors Drive location, there have been five offshoots. A wedge-shaped mid-90s South Parkway location that Oscar closed even though he says it was doing good business because "I just burned myself out." A Hampton Cove location with live music couldn't recover following bad vibes after a drunken fight there put someone in the hospital and Oscar's business partner "bailed." A few years back Oscar parted ways with a second South Parkway location that is now known as Southside Cantina. A first Madison location "just didn't work out, I'll leave it at that," Oscar says, but in 2015 Bandito opened a new restaurant at 7193 Hwy. 72 W. in Madison. And on July 30, the Highway 72 location will begin hosting live music with a performance from Huntsville rockabilly band The Crackerjacks. "I said we've got to get this place rockin' and rollin' because it's a nice big place," Oscar says of the current Madison location. "We hope to have karaoke and even thought about having a Sunday kids' karaoke - because nobody does that, right?"

Kitchen workers at Bandito Burrito are shown wearing makeup in the manner of the rock band Kiss. (Courtesy photo)

Employees that rock

Bandito is a magnet for musicians, both as customers and employees. Helen Faulkner plays drums for local rockers the Cheri Love Affair and Snacks, has worked here for close to 10 years. Faulkner oozes Kim Gordon levels of indie-rock coolness. At Bandito she works front-of-house: handling the register, taking orders, bringing out food, keeping the dining room straight, serving beers, etc.

"It's easy to work here if you're a touring musician or you have shows," Faulkner says, "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.

"And touring bands that come through always stop in here because we'll give them a huge deal because they're on tour. It's very cool."

Bandito Burrito cook Travis Thompson holds up one of the restaurant's t-shirts he designed. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)

Travis Thompson was in his mid-teens when his dad took him to eat at Bandito for the first time, following a father-son trip to now defunct music retailer Sunburst Records. Ten years later Thompson started working at the restaurant as a cook. And 10 years after that he's still here. Thompson has short dark hair and numerous tattoos, including a design inspired by punk band the Ramones. He's wearing a black baseball cap with the bill turned upward. A veteran of such local bands as Really Loud Hamburgers (guitar) and Thomas Junction (bass), Thompson's favorite thing to cook at Bandito is picadillo - a shredded, slow-cooked and spiced chuck roast available in burritos. He says he's worked here for so long because "it's laid back. Basically a hub of like-minded people."

Thompson also designs many of the restaurant's t-shirts, including a recent Cinco de Mayo tee inspired by the sexy cover art for Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass's 1965 "Whipped Cream & Other Delights." But instead of a woman covered suggestively in whipped cream, as on the LP cover, Thompson rendered a gal covered in burritos and empty beer cans.

Bandito cook Graham Shelton has red hair, mustache and a left arm tattooed with characters from the animated series "Futurama." For customers looking to step outside signature Bandito offerings, like the aforementioned green bean, Shelton suggests the off-menu item chile relleno burrito. Shelton has been working at Bandito for 11 years. "When I got the job all three of Oscar's daughters were working here and their work ethic was above and beyond anybody else's," Shelton, age 31, says. "It was really cool to see how close-knit everybody was around here and how relaxing it was to work here. That instantly drew me in. And to become a part of that is pretty cool."

While a mix of '80s pop, New Wave and rock music often plays in the dining room, Shelton says the Bluetooth speaker back in the hot small Bandito kitchen usually blasts classic punk by bands like the Dickies. That is if the kitchen's TV isn't on and tuned to movies on cable channel IFC.

Faulkner says Oscar is "like a dad to me." She's probably not the first or last Bandito employee to feel that way. As Rachel Gutierrez puts it, "He has given people jobs, bailed them out of jail and sometimes given them a couch to sleep on."

Bandito employees don't just work together they party together. And that includes Oscar, who often accompanies his staff to go sing karaoke at local watering hole Moody Monday's.

The Bandito owner's karaoke jams include Joe Cocker'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 says. "We bring the house down with that."