Working as a server on the Warner Bros. commissary within the Sixties, Antonio Gutierrez routinely waited on the tables of Hollywood heavyweights.
Frank Sinatra. Jane Fonda. Francis Ford Coppola. Barbra Streisand. And Jack Warner, the top of the Burbank studio.
Gutierrez had emigrated from Mexico a decade earlier with the dream of opening a restaurant of his personal. So when he bought the possibility, he requested Warner for recommendation on the matter.
“Don’t go into the restaurant enterprise!” the studio boss informed him, one among Gutierrez’s daughters recalled. “You gained’t make any cash!”
Gutierrez was undeterred: He opened Antonio’s on Melrose Avenue in 1970. The Mexican spot quickly grew to become a hangout for a number of the entertainers Gutierrez had as soon as waited on — and its partitions have been a testomony to that patronage, crammed almost to the ceiling with framed images of the restaurateur alongside the likes of Sinatra and Coppola.
However folks didn’t simply come to Antonio’s for a possible superstar sighting. From the start, in an L.A. awash in gloppy spectacles of refried beans and orange cheese from the Cal-Mex combo-plate playbook, Antonio’s provided objects hardly ever seen on Southland menus — pollo en pipian, chiles en nogada and huachinango a la Veracruzana.
Critics observed.
“Till the brand new wave of locations such because the Border Grill and Tamayo, Antonio’s was the main — just about the one — Mexican place that systematically broke out of the slender world of enchiladas and tamales,” a 1988 Instances assessment of a relatively short-lived Santa Monica location of the restaurant mentioned.
Gutierrez, who closed the Melrose mainstay in 2022, died at house in Los Angeles on Sept. 15 after battling Parkinson’s illness, daughter Irma Rodriguez mentioned. He was 85.
His demise and the quiet shuttering of Antonio’s are a reminder of what has been misplaced amid a deluge of restaurant closures spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic and different components. Greater than 65 notable L.A. institutions shut down in 2023.
Gutierrez’s household selected to not publicize his demise final fall, opting to grieve in non-public, Rodriguez mentioned. Now, although, she believes “many wish to know” her father’s story.
Antonio Gutierrez, the restaurateur behind Antonio’s on Melrose Avenue, within the late Nineteen Fifties.
(Courtesy of Irma Rodriguez)
“He was a person most blissful when he took care of individuals within the restaurant,” she mentioned. “That was his largest pleasure in life, as a result of it was his dream.”
Antonio Lopez Gutierrez was born in Monterrey, Mexico, on Oct. 25, 1937. One in all 10 kids, as a youngster he labored at a neighborhood newspaper — the place he operated the printing press and later managed it, Rodriguez mentioned. After about three years, she mentioned, Gutierrez had saved sufficient cash to go away Common Terán, a municipio simply outdoors Monterrey, for the U.S.
It was the Nineteen Fifties, and post-war L.A. was booming. Settling right here, Gutierrez and his spouse, Yolanda — whom he had married round 1960 — had 4 different kids moreover Rodriguez: Rebecca, Manuel, Andrea, and Antonio Jr., the final of whom died in 1990 in a automotive accident.
Gutierrez realized English whereas working in eating places, serving as a busboy, dishwasher and waiter, mentioned daughter Rebecca Gutierrez. Amongst his stops was the famed Wilshire Boulevard hang-out Perino’s.
However even after securing his alternative gig on the Warner Bros. commissary within the Sixties, Gutierrez didn’t decelerate. After engaged on the studio lot every day, he would come house, have a chew to eat, take a nap and head to his second job at Chianti Ristorante, a venerable Italian place on Melrose. His time at Chianti was an schooling, Rebecca mentioned.
“He realized quite a bit — he realized about wines, the right way to make a Caesar salad,” she mentioned. “And he realized quite a bit from speaking to folks.”
Antonio’s opened in 1970 to quick notices in The Instances and the Los Angeles Night Citizen Information, the latter of which praised the decor as “heat and very intimate, with deep leather-based cubicles and genuine Mexican work.”
Gutierrez, who sported a meticulously trimmed mustache, moved with grace by means of a restaurant of carved wooden, painted tiles and curved archways. Early on, he wore a colourful bolero vest and a big tie executed up in a bow. Later, on the urging of Rodriguez, he switched to a extra typical swimsuit and tie.
Instances columnist Gustavo Arellano, creator of “Taco USA: How Mexican Meals Conquered America,” mentioned that menu objects akin to pollo en pipian spoke to Gutierrez’s satisfaction — and confidence.
“If you’re opening a Mexican restaurant on Melrose within the Seventies, you’re principally standing athwart the previous and way forward for Mexican meals in Los Angeles,” he mentioned. “ it’s important to embody the combo plates, which nonetheless dominated Mexican eating places on the time. However you additionally see that the Angeleno palate is demanding extra ‘genuine’ flavors. The truth that he’s doing pipian reveals he has a lot satisfaction in his meals, and that he is aware of his Westside viewers will develop to adore it.”
Certainly, although Gutierrez was a trailblazer, he nonetheless catered to the old-school American palate with comforting combo plates, akin to Yolanda’s particular, which featured an enchilada, a chile relleno and a taco.
By the late Eighties, different Mexican eating places had caught up with Antonio’s. Locations akin to La Serenata de Garibaldi have been serving to broaden Angelenos’ conception of Mexican cooking. Nonetheless, prospects caught round at Antonio’s.
Antonio Gutierrez at his Melrose Avenue restaurant round 2013.
(Courtesy of Irma Rodriguez)
However the pandemic and Gutierrez’s failing well being proved insurmountable challenges. The social justice protests of Might and June 2020, which got here on the heels of L.A. County eating places reopening for in-person eating simply days earlier, roiled the stretch of Melrose that included Antonio’s. There was vital property harm amid the mayhem. It bought dicey at Antonio’s, mentioned Rodriguez, who lengthy labored there.
“My husband and son protected the restaurant for 2 days straight till the armed guards got here,” mentioned Rodriguez, whose husband, Guillermo, ran the restaurant together with her. “It was loopy.”
She mentioned that the pandemic made it “very onerous towards the tip to maintain going.” And, she mentioned, “the streets have been altering — on Melrose, issues bought a bit chaotic.”
Antonio’s shuttered in January 2022 with little fanfare. However a story within the Beverly Press mentioned that with the closure, L.A. hadn’t simply misplaced a great Mexican restaurant — it additionally “misplaced a swath of its graciousness, too.”
And that emanated from Gutierrez. Though he’d slowed down by the 2010s, he nonetheless might summon his attribute appeal — and drop just a few names.
In a video posted to YouTube in 2013, Gutierrez ready a New York strip steak “the way in which Mr. Sinatra used to love it,” and pollo almendrado “Barbara Sinatra type.”
“Significantly better than a taco, anytime!” Gutierrez mentioned of the rooster in almond sauce. “However don’t discriminate towards tacos, that’s what we’re well-known for additionally. Barbara likes my tacos, too.”
