Some people might shy away from honoring the legacy of a building whose history had a few unsavory hiccups.
But it was those hiccups, the rough-hewn history handed down by the last tenant bar, the popular biker hangout Bashful Bandit, that Toby Kyte wanted to celebrate.
Thatโs why Kyte and his sibling partners โ brothers Terry and Trevor and sister Leslie Frost โ named their barbecue restaurant at 3686 E. Speedwayย Bashful Bandit Barbecue.
โI think the history of the building and where itโs at and, specifically, the roughness of the Bandit, or the perceived roughness, kind of fits with the old school barbecue we do,โ said Kyte, who estimated the projectโs total cost at a couple million dollars.
Bashful Bandit Barbecueโs backyard barbecue style โis not trying to be anything itโs not. Itโs kind of authentic. I think the Bashful Bandit was an authentic place,โ he added.
The bar from the old Bashful Bandit is still in place, graffiti carvings and all, in the newly remodeled building and home of the soon-to-open Bashful Bandit Barbecue.
Roughly 2ยฝ years after buying the 76-year-old building in June 2021, the partners have officially opened the restaurant, celebrating the grand opening on Dec. 27.
Kyte had initially hoped to have the restaurant open in fall 2021, but delay after delay pushed the timetable back at every turn. Plans to redo the Bandit parking lot and the adjacent lot of their neighbor was then expanded to include the lot on the other side. Each building permit seemed to require a prerequisite permit, and once they had the permits, they faced COVID-related supply chain holdups.
The renovation work included installing a new electrical system with an expanded capacity to accommodate a restaurant. They also added patio dining and an outdoor cooking area centralized in a converted 50-foot semi-trailer.
Inside, they retained the old bar that likely dated back to 1947, when Bertha Lester built the 2,875-square-foot building to house Rio Rita Bar. But they got rid of the old bathrooms and built new ones and they stripped old and stained drywall from the interior walls and added double doors to improve the traffic flow.
When they removed the drywall on one side of the dining room, they unearthed part of the original aqua-colored wall from Rio Rita. They also found โsome super cool wallpaper from the โ60sโ that Kyte preserved.
โThatโs what I liked about the building; I didnโt want to cover it up with subway tile,โ he said.
Instead, he decorated one wall with old Bashful Bandit bar memorabilia and another with reminders of Rio Rita.
A small ragged piece of wallpaper from the buildingโs days as the Rio Rita are exposed at the new Bashful Bandit Barbecue. Memories of the structureโs past, like the piece of wall paper, neon signs and the bar, are being incorporated into the remodel, including items from the Rio Rita and more recently the Bashful Bandit bar.
During the renovations, workers also found old posters from the 1960s bands that played the bar and a Super Bowl squares betting poster from Super Bowl 2 in 1968 with the Green Bay Packers and Oakland Raiders. The poster had names written into the squares.
Nostalgia for the old building, though, will not be the focus once diners get out of their cars and walk toward the building.
โYou walk by the pits, you see the pits, you see us wrapping the brisket, you can talk to the pitmaster. He might give you a little taste of our sausage,โ Kyte said, adding that the view from the patio seating offers a window into the action. โThat whole experience before you even walk in the door kind of primes you for what โฆ you are about to eat and order. โฆ I think thatโs kind of missing in some places.โ
Kyte, whose family owns Bisbee Breakfast Club and whose father operated Pizza Hut restaurants in Tucson for 65 years, grew to love barbecue during his eight years in Texas studying industrial organizational psychology at Texas A&M. The campus in College Station is about an hour outside of Austin, which back in the early 2000s was at the epicenter of the central Texas craft barbecue scene.
Blackโs Barbecue, dating back to 1932, and Smittyโs Market, which followed in 1948, put Lockhart, Texas, on the barbecue map, which was soon populated by a handful of noteworthy understudies in Austin with Terry Blackโs Barbecue and Franklinโs Barbecue leading the march.
Kyte, who lived in Austin while he finished his Ph.D. dissertation, and his buddies would take barbecue tours to the regionโs best known joints, as well as the holes in the wall.
โThereโs not a lot of indoor seating in Texas. Youโre sitting at a picnic table and youโre getting a huge tray of food and couple of beers and youโre sitting outside with your friends on a Saturday,โ he recalled. โYouโre outside, smelling the smoke, talking to the pitmaster. Itโs almost more about the experience than the barbecue itself. Obviously, the barbecue has to be good, but the experience is what does it for me.โ
Bashful Bandit Barbecue will operate with a Texas foundation that includes using offset smokers fueled exclusively with wood. But when it comes to flavors, Kyte is looking homeward.
Pitmaster Jesse Aguirre slices a beef brisket for a catering order at the new Bashful Bandit Barbecue.
โAnyone can open a Texas (style) barbecue restaurant, but being from Tucson I kind of like those flavors of Tucson,โ he said, which includes green chile pulled pork, chile relleno sausage made with poblano peppers, chicken basted in a housemade molรฉ barbecue sauce and chicken grilled like they do it at Tucson area carnicerias.
โItโs kind of Texas methodology with Arizona flavors so Iโm calling it Arizona barbecue,โ he said.
Bashful Bandit Barbecue is open from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.ย
