Sharky’s Burrito Company
Most Amarillo residents know Sharky’s Burrito Company, the locally owned build-your-own-burrito restaurant on South Georgia Street. This small location existed long before Chipotle’s arrival in Amarillo, pushed out similar chains like Moe’s Southwest Grill, and has cemented itself as a local institution.
But most residents may not know the Sharky’s origin story connects to another local restaurant: All the Fixins. Back then, Sharky’s owner Brent Epps was a partner and long-time manager at the home-cooking family eatery on Coulter Street . When it became time to move on from All the Fixins, he was able to shift some of his team members into a fresh new concept with a much smaller footprint and menu: Sharky’s.
“We opened here in July of 2004,” Epps says from his small office inside the restaurant. “As a matter of fact, the tables out here are still from All the Fixins.”
Also from All the Fixins? Sharky himself. Loreto “Sharky” Gonzalez had been a cook at All the Fixins and a friend and mentor of Epps. Sharky helped develop the menu bearing his name—right down to the customer-favorite barbacoa—and served as a cook there until his death in 2018.
“I wanted to honor him, and there were some fun things we could do with [the name], advertising-wise,” Epps adds. A painting of Gonzalez hangs inside the store.
At the time, the quick-serve, fast-casual concept was relatively new to Amarillo. It required fewer employees than a full-service restaurant and a lot less space. Sharky’s took a few weeks to get going that first year, and then it just never stopped. Epps added a drive-thru during the pandemic, but the concept hasn’t changed.
But the customer base has definitely evolved. The restaurant always attracted families at dinner and construction workers at lunch. Over the past decade, Sharky’s gained something resembling a cult following among local teenagers. Epps can’t exactly explain why. “I think it’s an organic thing,” he says. “The people that come in are high school kids, and then they’re turning into college kids.” They come back from school over the summer, he says, and bring college friends with them, along with their parents. “And then they go back to school and I start seeing their parents here.”
The proximity to Tascosa High School a mile west could be part of the appeal, but Epps says he’s just as likely to see students from Caprock or Amarillo High or West Plains. Some of those students become part of the rotating Sharky’s workforce, building burritos and nachos and salads for customers (and a lot of their friends).
It wasn’t long before those students started getting married. “We do a lot of wedding caters,” Epps says as the summer starts to wind down. “We’ve done 14 already this summer and have some big ones [coming up]. That’s all it is: These kids are getting married and they’ve been coming here for years.”
Burritos remain the biggest seller at Sharky’s, but the real hero of the operation may be the spicy ranch, which itself has gained a legendary reputation across the city. “We literally made [our] spicy ranch the week after we opened the store. I’ll be honest—it was nothing special,” Epps remembers. He took the base ranch recipe from All the Fixins and modified it into what has become Sharky’s signature sauce.
Two decades of students grew up on that spicy ranch, and it keeps bringing them (and their families) back. Epps may not be able to explain why, but after 40 years in the restaurant world, he counts his blessings. “We’re blessed to be in Amarillo because they treat you differently, being the local guy. Amarillo’s just a pretty cool, local place. It’s just a different animal,” he says.
Or maybe not quite an animal. More like a toothy, predatory fish.
