ADRIAN — Maria Guerrero grew up in the restaurant that now carries her name.

She wasn’t even born yet when her grandparents, Mike and Mary Guerrero, started Sunnyside Cafe 50 years ago. The Mexican restaurant has been a mainstay of the Sunnyside neighborhood on Adrian’s east side ever since — and Guerrero is proud to be carrying on that legacy.

“The biggest compliment I hear is ‘My parents used to take me there as a kid and now I take my grandchildren there,’ ” she said.

Before Mike and Mary Guerrero bought the building at 2495 E. Maumee St., it housed the Mexico City Bakery. The couple lived in the nearby Drexel Park subdivision. He worked at Schwinn Chevrolet in Blissfield in the mornings and Merillat Cabinets in the afternoons; she worked in the cafeteria at Bixby Medical Center where her love for restaurant work was kindled.

“My grandma used to tell my grandfather, ‘One day I’m going to turn that place into a restaurant,’ ” Guerrero said.

When Mike Guerrero came into a little bit of money as a result of a lawsuit, he made a down payment on the building and bought it for his wife. 

Maria Guerrero wasn’t born yet, but her father, Emilio “Pal” Guerrero, remembers the early days well. It took several months to get the restaurant up and running. The first day they opened up the doors, some of the neighborhood kids came by and asked for some tacos. The Guerreros said yes — as long as they would agree to go through the neighborhood knocking on doors and telling everyone the restaurant was finally open.

The restaurant was open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mike would come in first thing in the morning, before work, fire up the equipment and get things rolling. Mary would arrive around 7 a.m. and she’d stay until late at night or early the following morning. In those days, the nearby factories provided most of the restaurant’s business, and it was busy all the time — so much so that some people would bring in playing cards so they could play games while they waited, or if it was Saturday night, stop to pick up the Sunday paper that had just hit the streets.

Working in the restaurant business you meet a lot of characters, and for Pal Guerrero, there’s one who stands out.

One year around Christmas, a large man came in and sat down for dinner. He was a careful eater — dainty, even — and he called Pal over to his table. “Hey, I want to buy the restaurant,” he said. When told it wasn’t for sale, he said “No, not like that — everybody here, I want to buy their dinner.”

The staff tallied up the bills of everyone in the restaurant. The man paid with a $100 bill — which, in those days, was enough to pay everyone’s check with money left over — and said to keep the change.

For several years, he would come back once a year around Christmas and do the same thing every time. He never gave his name; the staff just called him “The Man.”

With her grandmother running the restaurant and her father working there, it was natural that Maria Guerrero would end up spending time there from a young age. She learned to count using pennies from the register, and because her grandfather didn’t know how to read, she would accompany him on trips to the store.

She can remember telling her grandmother, “One day I’m going to be just like you.”

As an adult, Guerrero went into the food service business for herself, setting up her own catering company and buying  a food truck. Running the trailer, she said, proved to be both challenging and rewarding.

“I thought it was going to be just like hopping into a kitchen,” she recalled, but with a food trailer, dealing with the water, electricity and propane,  plus doing everything in a small space, adds a whole new dimension to the job.

At the same time, she enjoys making people’s food right in front of them.

“I love that part,” she said. “I want you to see how I’m preparing your food. I want you to see exactly what I’m doing.”

And she enjoys getting to talk with customers while preparing their food, something that doesn’t happen at a restaurant when the person making the food is back in the kitchen and the customer is sitting at their table.

“It’s such a cool vibe and such a cool feeling when they come up to the trailer,” she said.

She purchased the restaurant from her grandmother in 2013, and other than a small addition to the name — making it Maria’s Sunnyside Cafe — she changed very little. In particular, she kept her grandmother’s recipes and commitment to fresh, homestyle cooking.

“Everything is made fresh daily,” she said. “You’re tasting what we eat at our house.”

She still has customers who remember her when she was a child, clearing tables and filling up drinks, and even some who have been coming since the restaurant first opened.

In those 50 years, the restaurant has become a mainstay of Adrian’s Sunnyside neighborhood, so named because it’s on the easternmost edge of town, the first to see the rising sun. 

It’s a neighborhood where people look out for each other, Guerrero said.

“It’s a very tight-knit community,” she said.

Guerrero said that closeness keeps the neighborhood safe, too.

“In the 50 years we’ve been there, the restaurant has only been broken into twice, and the only thing they took was food,” she said.

When she’s working late at night, it’s not unusual for her to get a phone call from somebody alerting her that there’s a car in the parking lot. She lets them know that it’s OK, the car is hers — and she knows that people are looking out for her.

Four generations of her family have worked at Sunnyside now, and it’s still going strong. And while some business owners dream of expansions and new locations, Guerrero said she doesn’t see herself ever opening any other restaurant.

“I love what I do,” she said. “I love my job, I love cooking with all my heart and soul. When my customers are happy, that makes me happy.”

“I just like to think that when people come into Sunnyside, they feel like they’re coming home,” she said.

“What we’re giving back to the community is just a piece of home.”

Maria’s Sunnyside Cafe is 2495 E. Maumee St. For more information, call 517-265-6734 or go to mariassunnysidecafe.com.