Which Mexican place in Pilsen would you choose if...

You guys came through for me like gangbusters last week when I needed an Indian place on Devon that was "nice," clean enough for a clean-freak wife, and not too spicy. (Tiffin, which filled the bill perfectly.) Well, tonight we're going to a gallery in Pilsen, and it would be great to find a Mexican restaurant there that fit the same general criteria. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Maybe not quite Pilsen, but real close and damn good:

La Casa de Samuel (see my recent post, linking to a couple of other posts): viewtopic.php?p=217807#p217807). Just make sure the Mrs. takes it easy with the salsa . . . some friends of mine find it very hot.


La Casa de Samuel
2834 West Cermak
Chicago, IL 60623
773-376-7474

Man, Nuevo Leon has the nice and mild down, but is not for a clean-freak.

Honky Tonk barbecue, when Efrain is making birria and sides (which is probably not tonight), is an off-the-wall suggestion for someday.

La Cebollita, maybe?

Mundial, no question.

Best,
Michael

Mundial.
Yup.

Mundial!

Mundial Cocina Mestiza

I'll third Mundial.

I think Riddlemay needs to have his own thread for these queries with a special setting for "echo"

MHays wrote:I think Riddlemay needs to have his own thread for these queries with a special setting for "echo"

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Mundial.

Mhays wrote:I think Riddlemay needs to have his own thread for these queries with a special setting for "echo"

At the very least, I probably could start availing myself of cut-and-paste. ("Nice, clean, unspicy." Or maybe, just the initials NCU will do. )

We went to Mundial, and were happy as clams. Might post a word or two about what we ate when I have a little more time, but for now, didn't want to let any more time elapse before thanking one and all for the terrific replies.

I’m just awful at writing about food (a claim which will be borne out by this post), but here’s what we ate at Mundial, to the best of my ability to describe it.

(I’m hampered by the fact that what might have been my “cheat sheet”—Mundial’s dinner menu as posted online—does not correspond to the menu we saw.)

We started with an appetizer that was tamals laid out flat (rather than wrapped around anything) and covered with shredded chicken in a kind of mole sauce that probably wasn’t really a mole sauce, because I don’t know what constitutes a genuine mole sauce, but this was like that. The whole thing was over some banana leaves. I loved the soft texture of the thickish tamals, and there was plenty of chicken-in-sauce topping over all of it. Delicious. Enough for three to share, easily, even though only two of us shared it.

My entrée was a special, a pork loin cooked rarish in a tasty, somewhat sweetish sauce. It was beautifully tender. There was also so much of it that some slices were more well-done than others. All of it was good. I had confidence that even the more rarish parts would do me no harm, and I was right. And they were the best parts. It was served with a mountainous pile of fried onions that for some reason tasted better than any fried onions I’ve had before, even though I could not identify a specific reason why. (If it was because of a special seasoning, I could not identify it. They just tasted like great fried onions.)

We shared a cinnamon glazed baked sweet potato that was fine, but unnecessary. (It was unspectacular, and there was enough food without it.)

Desserts looked great on the menu, and in real life being carried past our table, but we were full enough that only our eyes and brains were tempted, not our stomachs. So we deferred that to a future visit.

We were happy the restaurant was able to seat us. We were “walk-ins,” because we had no idea how much time we would want to spend walking around the galleries in Pilsen before heading to dinner, and didn’t want to force ourselves into a time frame in advance. When we arrived, the host at first told us there would be a forty-five minute wait. That was too much for us, so I (in all sincerity) told him that we were disappointed not to be able to dine there that evening, and would on a future occasion instead. This appeared to cause him to reconsider his possibilities, and he found us a table for five (our party was three) that, while obviously not optimal, allowed us to experience Mundial, so we were grateful to him for his “thinking outside the box" hospitality.