One of Fall River's best Portuguese restaurants is up for sale. Here's the asking price.
FALL RIVER — O Gil, a County Street fixture for more than 30 years and a standout among the city’s Portuguese restaurants, is up for sale.
According to a listing on commercial real estate website Loopnet, owners and brothers in law Victor Fagundo and Felisberto Souza are retiring. They opened the restaurant in 1991.
The $999,000 asking price buys the three-story building at 915 County St. and the business, which includes the restaurant, a full working kitchen, and bar with full liquor license. Two apartment units are located above the ground-floor commercial space. A parking lot at the corner of County and Earle streets a block away is also up for sale separately.
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Fagundo’s father, Gil, for whom the restaurant is named, is credited with bringing Portuguese steak to Fall River.
Gil Fagundo worked at a famous restaurant in the Azores called Josette Tavares before immigrating to Fall River in 1971. He started cooking at Fall River’s St. Michael’s Club on Webster Street in the Flint, where he introduced Portuguese steak to diners in the city. His son and Souza, who both immigrated here a year later, cooked alongside him at the St. Michael’s Club over the years, honing their skills.
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When Gil Fagundo died in February 1991, they named their new restaurant after him. “I was originally going to call it Bon Appétit, because it’s in a French neighborhood, but when he died, I had to put his name on the restaurant,” said Fagundo in a 2018 interview.
The casual, homestyle restaurant tucked away in this largely residential neighborhood has long had a reputation of serving one of the best, if not the best, Portuguese steaks in the city — a thin, tender cut of beef topped with a fried egg and a garlic and wine reduction, with yellow rice and french fries on the side. It’s also well regarded for its carne alentejana, a mix of braised pork and littlenecks.
While one of Fall River's top Portuguese restaurants, the name O Gil itself — which translates to “Gil’s” — has been a local curiosity.
“A lot of people think it’s an Irish bar,” Fagundo said in 2018. What made things more confusing was when several of their sign-makers added extra apostrophes and an S at the end of O Gil. Since the signs were made, they kept them.
Material by Linda Murphy was used in this story.
Dan Medeiros can be reached at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Owners of Fall River Portuguese restaurant O Gil retiring
