A good burrito in Arizona is like good lobster in Maine or gumbo in Louisiana.
KAWC’s Stephanie Sanchez went to uncover the secret behind the Yuma burrito named one of the best in the country. Turns out – it’s a family tradition that started almost 70 years ago.
Juan and Bessie Gutierrez opened their first little restaurant in downtown Yuma in 1954.
And no matter how many times the business expanded, or changed location, the basic burrito stayed the same. Just ask customers at Mr. G‘s, like native Yuman Mike Edwards, “The tortillas are the reason. I mean, they’re like homemade tortillas, and that’s what it is.”
Mr. G’s and its sister restaurant, Chile Pepper, have become Yuma institutions – and the Gutierrez family still owns and runs them.
“A lot of times I have to get orders for people that have been here from out of town, to take out of town, to take in an ice chest to Salinas or wherever that might be,” says Edwards.
When asked what keeps him coming back, Edwards says, “yeah, the bean and cheese burrito. That’s the classic, that’s Mr. G’s.”
"The bean and cheese burrito. That's the classic. That's Mr. G's!" Mike Edwards
Juan and Bessie Gutierrez’s are now gone. But just around the corner from Mr.G’s is the restaurant where they cooked up their reputation.
“We’re in what used to be La Casa Gutierrez which before it became the restaurant was my grandmother’s home,” says Mary Lou Huff, the daughter of Juan and Bessie and the CEO of the Gutierrez family Restaurants.
When Huff’s grandparents wanted to sell their home, Mary Lou’s mom decided to buy it. In 1960, they turned the old family home into a sit-down restaurant. Huff says, “It had that old Mexican look to it. We painted the walls, we washed it with an adobe color.”
The house already had a reputation known to many in Yuma. Mary Lou’s grandmother, Vicente, was a popular midwife. Vicente’s great-grand-daughter, Andrea Huff, says “there would be people who would come up and say, oh my aunt was born in this house or my mother was born in this house or I was born in this house. We hear it constantly still. And I would say, that’s my great grandmother.”
The kitchen where Bessie cooked is in the back of the house.
"My mom cooked very simple food, and she wanted to do it every single day." Mary Lou Huff
Mary Lou Huff guides us through the old home, originally built in the 1890s. “Through this swinging door you can see this is where the commercial kitchen was. This was the back porch and they made it into a commercial kitchen,” she says.
Huff says it was in this kitchen that the recipes for refried beans, machaca beef, fresh salsa, and handmade tortillas were perfected using Bessie’s philosophy. “My mom cooked very simple food and she wanted to do it every single day,” she remembers.
And the food never changed over the years – always the same ingredients – simple and fresh. Mary Lou Huff says the family knows how the food should taste.
But Bessie’s recipes weren’t written down anywhere. So the cooks who worked with Bessie for years had a lot of work to do. Andrea says her grandmother had her own methods, “she doesn’t do things by teaspoons and tablespoons, she does things by handfuls… we worked for a year and a half at least getting these recipes down.”
The family rescued the recipes, but couldn’t save La Casa Gutierrez. The foundation of the old house wasn’t able to take the wear and tear of a restaurant. La Casa Gutierrez finally closed in 2013. Mary Lou Huff says the community was unhappy – to say the least.
Huff remembers the family “tried to close it about a year before we actually did and people picketed. My mom was so upset about that, that she says don’t close it. So we did it another year and finally said this is it.”
Mary Lou Huff stands in what was the main dining room looking out toward the front porch of the old house, now mainly used for storage. That’s where people sat waiting for a table at La Casa Gutierrez for more than five decades.
“When I think back about how my mom used to cook,” she says, “when we were kids it was to feed her family. Then it got to where I’m going to open a restaurant and I’m going to feed this community. We’ve gone through probably four or five generations of people eating here, bringing children. They’re bringing their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
An online food and travel blog recently named the Mr. G’s/Chile Pepper bean and cheese burrito one of the best in the nation. But that’s something Yumans have known for decades.
050216 - Article updated to correct a typo and for clarity. First line changed to reflect variety of food served at first restaurant in 1954. Typo corrected replacing "Chili" with "Chile" in Chile Pepper. Section referring to Andrea Huff as manager of food ordering changed - Huff works with restaurant managers to "cost" food. Section noting Andrea Huff "worked at the restaurant for years" removed. KAWC regrets these errors and omissions.
The story of the Gutierrez family and their Yuma restaurants is far more detailed than what is presented here. The story covers almost 70 years of Yuma history. KAWC encourages listeners to reach out to the Gutierrez family to learn more about their deep Yuma roots and for more details about their family restaurants.