On a recent Tuesday afternoon, 76-year-old Coi Serna and his 46-year-old daughter Gina Sustaita pulled up in her Toyota Highlander to the tin-roofed drive-thru at Oscar's Taco House for one of their last lunches at the Southwest Side institution.
Serna, a veteran Conjunto singer, has been singing the praises of the little red diner at 705 Barrett Place and Zarzamora Street since 1968 when he first moved to the neighborhood from Corpus Christi. He now lives with Sustaita and her husband on the city's far West Side near Castroville.
Sustaita, a former business process consultant, joked she pretty much followed in her father's footsteps of loving Oscar's since she could walk. She noted her children also grew up with Oscar's, a tradition recently carried on by another generation with Sustaita's 1-year-old grandson.
Sustaita and her dad were back in the area following her doctor's appointment and decided to grab some Oscar's along with hundreds more devotees of the Tex-Mex treasure by the railroad tracks.
"And we're going to go eat in the parking lot over there because we know it's full [inside]," Sustaita said, just before a woman wearing an "Adios Oscar's" T-shirt handed her their food order through the passenger side window. "So we still want to have it because it's closing, but we can't take it all the way home because it's 30 minutes away."
Grab that last plate of puffy tacos and fried fish while you can. After 63 years of comidas and compadres, Oscar's will serve its last meal June 28.
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Soon the clang of hot Mexican plates and bottles of ice-cold beer will be replaced with the roar of construction. A long-planned overpass project will finally begin so that Zarzamora traffic can bypass the nearby train crossing and five-point intersection at Frio City Road and Kirk Place.
Part of the city’s 2022-2027 Bond Program, the multi-phase bridge project will improve mobility and minimize vehicular traffic subject to train crossings, according to the project website, which estimates 35 trains cross the area per day. Construction is slated to begin summer 2026 and conclude fall 2028.
Making way for that work meant buying out Oscar’s last year, said owner Alex Pruneda.
Pruneda started working at Oscar’s as a manager in 2014 before taking over the restaurant in 2021. Now 71, Pruneda said it’s time to move on.
"I take it as a blessing from upstairs that he wants me to retire," Pruneda said.
Not that any of his customers will hear of it.
As Sustaita and her dad drove off, Pruneda sat on a thin foldout bench outside the Oscar’s entrance where the numbered menu items lined the wall.
He's been asked a thousand times if he'll reopen Oscar's somewhere else, he said. Then as if on cue, a grizzled man in sunglasses and a baseball cap walked up to Pruneda to shake his hand with a drawn-out, “Hey, why you closing it, man?"
Pruneda smiled and said the Express-News was just asking him the same question.
As the man walked in, Pruneda turned with a smile. "You heard it with your own ears," he said.
"The bad thing is it gets very emotional," Pruneda added with a hitch in his voice. "People tell you, 'I've been coming here since I was 10 years old.' 'My mom used to bring me here; now I bring my mom.' And now they're bringing their grandkids. That's six decades, 63 years. We've been doing the same thing for the South Side. And you can tell they appreciate it. They're loyal. They call it a second home."
Home like they remember it
The feeling of home at Oscar’s has as much to do with what’s in and around the restaurant as what’s on the menu. Mainly because it's remained the same for the past six decades.
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Outside, the small corner spot still beckons diners with its weathered OSCAR’S TACO HOUSE awning and painted signs that include "THE VERY BEST PUFFY TACOS ‘OLD TASTE’ of SAN ANTONIO” and “PURO SAN ANTONIO SINCE 1962.” And those such as Sustaita who want their food to-go can still park parallel to the front door in the drive-thru or face the restaurant and flash their headlights for service.
Inside, patrons are treated to a similar familiar feast for the senses, not just the taste buds.
Orange booths with black tabletops still line the yellow-tiled walls that match the yellow linoleum floor, while brown four-tops with ruby red chairs still pack the dining room, sometimes lined together for extra-large gatherings.
Then there’s the classic decor. The neon Corona Light bottle and other colorful beer signs. The Betty Boop cutouts and the Cowboys and Spurs logos. The small mural of Oscar’s from its early carhop days and framed photos of the restaurant going back to its icehouse origins. And a big jukebox that still plays the stuff of Tejano legends such as Freddy Fender and Emilio Navaira, only now digitally instead of on small 45's.
As for the food, the critically- and customer-acclaimed puffy tacos still reign supreme. Though they still share the crown with Oscar's famous fried fish.
Throw in all those Oscar's regulars, which tend to skew in their 60s and 70s, and you have a timeless time capsule of true San Antonio food y familia.
"I kept everything going the same way," Pruneda said. "I didn't change anything as far as the recipes are concerned. The atmosphere, I try to keep it the same."
That goes right down to the diner's framed black-and-white photos of Oscar G. Garcia, the Army veteran who started it all.
A family tradition
A Cotulla native, Garcia made San Antonio home with his wife, Norma, after serving in World War II. The self-made businessman tinkered with a few area bars and cafes before opening a small icehouse at the corner of Barrett and Zarzamora in 1962.
Oscar’s originally was half the size it is today. (The kitchen was the actual icehouse and the dining room was an outdoor beer garden on a gravel lot.) In the mid-1960s, Garcia expanded Oscar’s beyond beers to a drive-in restaurant for the entire family.
Emphasis family. After Garcia died in 1978, his sons Rick and Steve Garcia took over. The brothers sold their father’s other businesses to focus on Oscar’s full-time until Pruneda bought the restaurant four years ago. Keeping that family tradition behind the counter, Pruneda's daughter Angel helps him in the afternoons and his other daughter April helps him in the mornings.
Pruneda considers his many customers as members of the family, too.
He recalled a married couple named Robert and Mary who worked at the former Kelly Air Force Base for 30 years, and how now Robert only swings by every other day so he can pick up an enchilada plate for his wife when she's at the hospital on dialysis. Then there's the couple from Floresville who come about once a week, now with their many brothers and sisters. And a Burbank High School reunion, class of ’75, with around 30 classmates.
“And I could just go on and go on,” Pruneda said.
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Filling final meals
Inside at a small two-seat booth under the Spurs logo, retirees Julia Luis and her husband, Amado, tucked into their beloved fish platters. Married for 50 years, they drove in from the La Vernia area just for a last bite of that popular seafood. And only for that popular seafood.
“That’s what we always order. We don’t order anything else,” Juila Luis said over the din of diners. “Puffy tacos are good, but the fish beats it.”
Again as if on cue, Amado Luis asked if Pruneda plans to reopen Oscar’s someplace else.
At the other end of the restaurant, longtime customer T.J. Hanna, 48, noted he grew up on the city’s North Side but fell in love with Oscar's as a middle-schooler. He used to hang out with a friend whose grandmother lived on Carroll Street, three streets away from the restaurant.
Hanna drove in from Canyon Lake just to enjoy his favorite puffy tacos one last time. And to give his girlfriend, Kat Smith, her first taste of Oscar's before it’s gone.
“We’re super excited,” he said. Later outside, Hanna noted his girlfriend loved the food, too.
As the Tuesday lunch rush slowed down, diners gathered outside for hugs and farewell photos. Those included septuagenarians Tony Amos, Ruben Elizondo, Frank Madrigal and Chris Mares, a group of AT&T retirees who milled about the front parking lot after filling lunches of fish, shrimp and carne guisada.
“I myself used to come here with my mom and dad,” Madrigal said. “That was 40 years ago when they were around. Come over here on Fridays, drink a beer, enjoy the atmosphere and the food.”
Then Mares asked, “They going to reopen, do you know, somewhere else? Is that it?”
When asked about his plans for life after Oscar's, Pruneda said he has a good retirement saved up for travel and time with his family. He'll also have more time for his other passion: bowling. While he enjoys hitting the casino once in a while, he joked that he'll need to be more conservative "now that money's not coming in."
Though Pruneda likely will continue to just smile away all those customers' pleas to relocate, he does offer a definitive answer just out of earshot of another group of longtime diners huddling outside for a photo.
"This is a symbol for the South Side," Pruneda said. "It was born here and it's going to do away here. And that's a good thing... And all good things come to an end."
Before Pruneda's emotions could get to him, a group of retired bus drivers grabbed him to take a picture. Raul Chapa, one of the former drivers, said he and his colleagues used to call in food orders to Oscar's and then hit the hazards at the bus stop across the street so they could run over and grab their food to eat on the job since they didn’t get a lunch break.
Just another taste of Oscar’s for the road.
