To bad they didn't keep to the old ways like the Redlands one.
You can't have the cook change the recipes and think your going to stay open..
you changed perfection it was all in the sause. God I hope you don't move the Redlands people or you will mess that one up too.. Redland is worth the drive down the hill..
COLTON >> The El Burrito restaurant here is closing Saturday after more than 50 years.
Sybil Meister and Cathy Nece, sisters who manage the family-owned restaurant together, have decided to retire after 20 years.
The location, 920 N. Mount Vernon Ave., has been home to an eatery owned by the Meisters since 1949, when their grandfather R.L. Meister opened a hamburger stand. The property was reinvented as a Mexican restaurant in 1957. The property is now for sale.
“We’ve had four generations of our families work there and serve four generations, if not more, customers, so we have people coming back,” said Sybil Meister. “We have people come from all over the country that have moved out of town and their first place to stop is El Burrito.”
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The decision to close was also partly related to the death of Sybil’s daughter, Koral Meister Pier, 20, in October 2014. Koral had worked in the El Burrito kitchen and aspired to become a chef. She died from a brain-killing amoeba called Balamuthia.
Sybil returned this week to say goodbye to longtime customers. She hadn’t been to work since leaving to be with her daughter at the hospital.
“It was a family tradition,” Sybil said. “She loved making food and carrying on her grandfather’s family traditions,” she said of her daughter.
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Nece said the regular customers have come every week for years.
“There are a lot of good memories,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons it’s hard to let go. There are ... generations of stories. We’re going to miss people like the business owners in the area. ... We’re going to miss them. We know their orders before they get out of their cars.”
Among the customers with fond memories is Colton resident Mike Face, 56. For Face, the El Burrito was a favorite high school hangout and a place to get a free lunch.
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“Some of our friends didn’t have cars,” said Face, who graduated from high school in 1977. “They wanted to take me to lunch so I told them if they bought my lunch, I would take them if they used my car.”
Face recently moved to Arizona to open an auto-body shop. He had owned an auto-body shop in San Bernardino and would still eat at El Burrito every week before he moved a week ago, he said.
“It was always a good place with good food, but it seemed whenever you go there, you always see friends from the past, people going there for a long, long period of time,” Face said. “I’m sad for the Meister family. The girls, they worked really hard and it’s sad to see them go away.”