There were a couple taxi companies located nearby when Bandito Burrito Co. first opened in 1990.

“We were always getting cabbies come in to eat,” Bandito’s piratical owner/founder Oscar Gutierrez told me in 2016. “There was one girl, she was a cabbie, and her name was Raven.”

Raven was a vegan, decades before that diet went mainstream. At Bandito – housed in a former Church’s Fried Chicken space at 3017 Governors Drive in west Huntsville – she always ordered the same thing: A bean burrito with rice and no cheese.

Regulars are, of course, a big deal in the service industry, especially a new local business, like Bandito was then. Raven was an especially frequent regular. And one who stuck with her go-to order.

After a while of ordering the same sans-cheese, beans-and-rice burrito, according to Gutierrez, 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 [burritos]. By the time she got in[side] to the counter it was waiting on her. We ended up putting it on the menu.”

More than 30 years later, “The Raven” remains a staple and steady seller on Bandito Burrito Co.’s menu, which is inscribed on chalkboards above and behind the counter.

The Raven’s fresh flavors and handmade textures are intact, too. A chewy/malleable tortilla wrapped around earthy refried beans and rice. Dipping into the accompanying red zingy salsa elevates it all. A satisfying eat that doesn’t leave you with a food hangover an hour later.

Local food tastes even better when it doesn’t murder your checking account. The Raven still goes for only three bucks, just a dollar or so more than a bean burrito from Taco Bell. Amid 2023 food prices, value is especially valuable right now

There’s way more competition among Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants in Huntsville that there was in 2015, let alone 1990. But Gutierrez isn’t the kind of restauranteur to makeover his menu with nouveau shimmer.

Online trolls may discount Bandito as mid/meh, but the truth is you can set your car’s dashboard clock to the food quality here.

It’s dependable, effective and tasty food working-class people can afford. That’s increasingly rare in the Huntsville market, where lunch at a local place today often runs more than an arena-concert ticket did back in Bandito’s first year of operation.

As anyone who’s been to Bandito Burrito Co. knows, the vibe there’s also a huge part of the experience. It’s not a carefully curated deal either. It’s decades of punk-rock ephemera that’s accumulated on the cozy dining room walls.

The customer mix is a peaceful collision of salt-of-the-earth and white-collar types, of hipsters and hippies. It’s not unusual to see a local or touring musician or two eating at Bandito, which still utilizes the booths from the building’s Church’s Fried Chicken past. Local figures of coolness like Jay Ratts, owner of bygone Huntsville indie shop Sunburst Records, are regulars, too.

Most importantly, Bandito’s vibe is about the tattooed staff, who take customers’ orders, make the food and pour the drinks, serve it to them, and clean off the tables afterwards.

With his goatee, cackling laugh, and stream-of-consciousness quips, Gutierrez has been a Huntsville anti-hero for a long time. If Huntsville ever issues its own currency or stamps, Oscar’s visage should be on one of them. Bandito employees past and present love him.

A former cook at Huntsville’s first Mexican restaurant, El Palacio, Gutierrez originally opened Bandito with around $15,000 and a few pots and pans. In the early days, Bandito’s staff was comprised of him, his teenage daughters and a couple employees.

Once, I asked Gutierrez where Bandito’s recipes came from. He answered simply by pointing at his head.

In 2016, Oscar’s daughter Rachel Gutierrez, recalled, “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 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 around there.

During Oscar’s time in San Bernardino, taco joints were more common than hamburger places, to his recollection. He learned how to cook at age 14, at a fried chicken place called the Lucky Wishbone.

A little later, Gutierrez fell in love with a girl and followed her to Huntsville after her family moved here. After a stint in the Air Force, he opened his own restaurants in Rogersville (the name was El Chico) and Athens (Los Amigos). Throughout the years he’d periodically return to Huntsville’s El Palacio to work.

Over the decades, there have been at least five Bandito offshoots. Once in Madison and two each in south Huntsville, two in Madison. The original is the last Bandito standing.

The origin story of another Bandito signature item, the Green Bean — a burrito filled with beans, cheese and citrusy/bright green sauce — doesn’t quite rival The Raven’s. Gutierrez told it to me this way, “Oh, I just like green sauce.”

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