Rebellion at the Burrito Lounge

Back in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Richmond Times Dispatch published a series of articles announcing the toll on the city’s restaurant industry. By December 11, 40 area restaurants had permanently closed their doors. By December 23 – less than two weeks later – the number had spiked to 50. 

Richmond, like cities and towns across the country, is littered with monuments to our national desecration. Empty buildings droop under the weight of absence – windows plastered with last year’s daily specials, graffiti-covered walls sending out signals to no one in particular. “One Nation Underground.” “Dude, Just Go to Therapy.” 

That Bandito’s Burrito Lounge and underground music venue has survived this purge is a kind of haphazard miracle. More, it’s a testament to the resilience of the line cooks, and bartenders, and wait staff that keep places like this running. 

Out front, a half-lit sign with a cartoonish calavera announces in bright red letters: “An RVA Original, Since 1997 A.D.” That was the year the Mexi-Cali restaurant and music venue’s founder, Sean McClain, started the underground hangout and hardcore launchpad near Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). In 2002, McClain relocated the lounge to its permanent home in the Museum District, where it has become a neighborhood staple. 

McClain had been running the place with occasional partners for 23 years when the pandemic hit. Six months in, the writing was on the wall. He told the Richmond Times Dispatch he didn’t have the cash on hand to keep the place going on carry-out alone, and he sold out to a restaurateur with big plans and deep pockets. A little over a year later, the place changed hands again. 

The present owner is a car guy with little to no experience in the restaurant business. A waiter with a compulsive smile tells me this. “This new guy, he was like ‘yo, dude, why do you guys stay a full hour after close? Like, get out of here.’ But like … I was like ‘man, we gotta clean up. This place don’t clean itself. He’s learning.” 

The anxiety of the times has missed the smiling waiter, and him alone (he’s single, childless, and he burnt through all his savings with a months-long COVID vacation). 

COVID closures prompted a mass involuntary exodus from the restaurant industry, and now there is a sense of urgency among returners and new recruits alike. At present, there are at least 1 million out-of-work restaurant and bar professionals according to data from the National Restaurant Association. Bandito’s brought back something like 70 - 80 percent of its employees, and there’s an eager earnestness in the way staff move here. 

One Sunday night, during a shift break, a pretty waitress with a bridge piercing and gauged ears talks about the way the culture has changed. “It’s better now … way better. The bikers don’t come around anymore. I’ve seen them maybe one time for a biker memorial. They weren’t bad, not like they used to be.” She is looking around the room at the crowd while she says this. Her son makes dinosaur noises in the booth beside her.

At another table, the bar’s general manager is doing homework while the youngest of her two sons dangles a whole fried chicken breast from his clenched teeth. She scribbles and erases, and scribbles and erases, and then the break is over. 

“Mom, why don’t you have to pay?” 

“I work here.” 

She brushes a strand of dirty blonde hair behind her ear, and it settles under a faded indigo tattoo: a diamond. 

That’s the draw of this place – its lack of pretense. 

Show up when the doors open at 11 a.m. or when the bar is closing at 2:00 a.m., and misfits, oddballs, and squares will be huddled on the sidewalk out front taking long, serious drags from Marlboro Reds. 

It goes without saying that this place has changed (at least as often as its changed hands). But in all this churn, maybe survival is the point. Maybe holding on to the places where people share some common ground is the rebellion. Maybe this is the underground now.