Mundial Cocina Mestiza
Between the three of them, Garcia and her partners have enough fine-dining experience to blanket Pilsen in white tablecloths. She and her husband, Eusebio, met in the kitchen at Gordon in the 80s, where Eusebio had made a name for himself as one of the few dishwashers to ever move up from the sink to pantry chef and line cook. (“You should go out with Eusebio,” Katie remembers chef Ron Blazek telling her at the time–“he’s going to be famous.”) Katie went on to La Tour and MK before getting out of the game five years ago to raise their two children. Eusebio helped open Red Light, Gioco, and Bin 36 Lincolnshire before taking a position at the Park Grill two years ago. When the couple decided this winter that it was time to open their own place, they brought in Eusebio’s Park Grill coworker Jorge Hernandez, a vet of, among other places, Coco Pazzo and Bistro 110. They refinanced their southwest-side homes and in April signed the papers on an 18th Street taco joint that, according to Garcia, “was a total dump.”
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By 8 PM last Saturday Mundial had generated enough buzz that more than a dozen people clustered awkwardly inside the restaurant’s front door, waiting as long as 40 minutes for a table. Once seated, diners unpacked coolers of beer and wine, and the noise level in the two small dining rooms rose to a happy clatter–save for the squalls of a cranky toddler who was finally soothed by a briskly multitasking waiter, a friend from Park Grill who’d been pressed into service that afternoon.
