- I feel so blessed to be here, being half Mexican,
growing up in Chicago.
Sometimes I'm in LA
and I'm like, "You guys got some good tacos
"but I don't know, there's some spots in Chicago."
- And they don't believe you, right?
They don't believe you.
The music stops, no!
(upbeat music)
- What is up, y'all?
It's your boy, Eli and we are in Chicago,
a place I called home for many many years
and I'm out with my homies, Vicko and Javier
and we got J. Lo, the hipster Jesus from the back.
(organ music)
It is raining right now and I'm not wearing a jacket
which shows I haven't been in Chicago in a hot minute
but we are in Pilsen, one of the most prominent areas
for Mexicans out here in Chicago and we're gonna have
some cool eats, talk about the experience
and our first stop is...
- [Javier] La Vaca!
- Moo, La Vaca, let's go!
(upbeat Mexican music)
- Hi, I'm Ivan.
- I'm Carmen Gutierrez and we're at La Vaca!
La Vaca Margarita Bar, we rebranded it six years ago
but the actual business has been in our family
for 50 years, so we grew up in Pilsen
and so we really wanted to make
the restaurant a home for Mexican people.
So we have our food here, drinks, our culture,
our art, music, so this is really a place
where Mexicans can come, hang out, have a great time
and feel like they're in Mexico in Chicago, when it's cold.
- So we do have a bunch of margaritas,
anywhere from strawberry, cucumber, passion fruit,
mango con chile, my personal favorite one is
the cucumber margarita,
fresh crushed cucumber, lime juice, tequila.
So our grandparents owned this restaurant since the 70s,
it was called Cuernavaca.
Five, six years ago they decided to retire
and us, the grandchildren, we didn't want to leave
the family hands and we changed the name to La Vaca,
we remodeled, we changed the menu, we added the patio,
six years later we're La Vaca.
- That's why Pilsen is the best
and that's why it's so great for us
being Mexican and staying here
and hopefully it stays Mexican forever.
(upbeat Mexican music)
- Oh, wow!
So this is queso, this is rib eye.
Oh my God, oh my God, I'm already in love
and I'm a little turnt
from all these margarita pitchers we're getting,
so I'm not mad at it.
- Is this a fish?
- That's supposed to be bacon wrapped shrimp.
- Oh this is a shrimp?
Holy crap, it's good.
- So I'm not used to eating these kind of tacos.
I like the kind of twist they put on it,
like they very much made it their own in a certain regards
'cause I don't really eat bacon wrapped shrimp,
bacon wrapped anything, especially in taco form,
so I'm pleasantly surprised.
So Pilsen, this location in particular,
owned by a family for the last 50 years,
grandparents have now passed the torch on to the grandkids,
they made certain renovations, they made certain changes
and I wanna say I can't help
but feel 'cause it's to the changing of the times
and changing of the neighborhood,
you feel that there's a shift going on within Pilsen,
within Chicago as a whole.
- I think it's been happening in the city in general.
I think that with Pilsen it's been a really slow process
because there's been a bigger fight, I wanna say,
like against a lot of those changes
but I think, at least for in Chicago,
it seems very intentional,
the way that neighborhoods change.
Like this neighborhood is now gonna be
a sort of punk trendy oasis.
Pilsen is more of like now considered an artsy district,
even though it always has been.
- Like what I really love about Chicago is
it's big city but once you like, plug into community,
it becomes small town.
If you can plug into a community in the city,
people will support you, they will.
- Yeah.
- I mean, it's definitely like, one of the neighborhoods
that people talk about that has been super gentrified,
right up there with Humboldt Park,
which is a Puerto Rican neighborhood.
Keep Pilsen as, like fight for it as much as you can
because it's intentional.
- No that's what's up, we gotta put our foot down
and like, elect people and put people in place
to like, hold those standards that the community holds,
that respect the preservation of it all
and see it as something you can't just jump in
for the taking.
Damn, we each
get a miche.
- [Javier] Don't fuck with these miches.
- In Time Out Chicago, this is like the top three micheleda
out of the entire city.
Oh my God.
I love the margaritas, this is just three flavors
out of like, 14.
I loved the bacon wrapped shrimp taco, that was delicious.
The rib eye with the queso, this is all like, dope.
They're really putting their own spin on it.
Javier, what was your favorite?
- The La Vaca.
- La Vaca, nice.
What's your favorite so far?
She's over here still eating, she ain't even stopped eating.
- The bacon wrapped shrimp.
- You ready?
- Mm-hmm.
- Gonna eat some more?
- Yes.
- They've got beer too, so we keep drinking.
(upbeat guitar)
All right, location number two, yo.
Maribel's, this is the corner store.
This is the spot.
- The corner store of your Mexican dreams.
It's a corner store by the way, not a bodega.
- My name is Alejandro Banda, we're right here in Pilsen
at Carniceria Maribel.
We've been in business since 1990,
it's a family-run business.
My grandma has been running it since 1990
with the help of uncles of mine, cousins of mine,
I've been here since I was 14, 15 helping out.
Lately, I think in the last two years, is when I took
complete control over the business.
Far back as I can remember, there's always been
people from the neighborhood that have come by,
supported, from the time I was five, six years old,
I could remember certain customers
that still come to this day.
We've been very well received in the community.
We've been very fortunate because of that.
We're a convenience store that has
a little bit of everything.
We do sell alcohol, we sell beer, tequila,
we have a little small section where we sell
a little bit of produce, we've been
a butcher's shop since 1990
and then in just the recent year or so,
we incorporated a taqueria in the back
to help maximize ourselves.
(upbeat music)
- We have four delicious tacos, we've got the carnitas,
we got the pastor, we got the asada
and we got the shrimp too.
The shrimp's not even on the menu, son, it was crazy.
I'm ready to dive in.
Oh!
Oh my God, that carnita meat is so good.
You got the Milagro tortilla,
just iconic here in Chicago.
This carnita, it reminds me of when I was a kid,
my mom would get the carnita meat
and I would just keep picking it at.
She'd get so pissed at me 'cause it was like,
"it's supposed to be for the tacos for dinner for later!"
And I'd just be picking at it, picking at it,
picking at it.
Like this is that, you know this is from a Mexican spot.
Why are spots like this important?
- They're good 'cause I feel like it makes it
part of your every day experience.
Literally, you have to buy toilet paper,
so you come in and you get toilet paper
but you're also like, "ooh I might as well get a taco."
- Yeah part of what I feel makes like, Chicago
and Mexican culture, Mexican food, so you know,
quote unquote authentic, we are mad far from Mexico
and I feel like that distance encourages people to hold on
to what they remember from home, to hold on to recipes,
to hold on to cultura.
I feel like that's what ends up getting you
so many places like Maribel.
- The carne asada taco is delicious
and sometimes I'm in LA and I'm like, "you guys got
"some good tacos but I don't know,
"there's some spots in Chicago--"
- And they don't believe you, right?
- They don't believe you, the music stops.
It's like, "No!"
- It's that distance again.
People had to really hold on to the culture that they had,
so when you have places like this,
people in the community support it.
They know who owns it and they know who goes to it
and they try and keep it alive.
- They know we're underrated in the rest of the country,
so we put on for ourselves.
- That's what's up.
I'm diving into the pastor.
- The pastor is my favorite.
It's probably also the most unhealthy
but that's why it's my favorite.
- I'm gonna get shrimp.
- Creamy sauce on it.
- They got creamy sauce
and these are some full-ass shrimps too.
Mm-hmm, this is amazing and I feel so blessed to be here,
to be reppin', being half-Mexican, growing up in Chicago.
Yo, thank you so much, man.
- Thank you guys for coming by.
How'd you guys like the food?
- It was great.
- It was freaking delicious, oh my God!
It was amazing and the cool thing about it is
this is such a neighborhood spot and the fact you provide
such high quality tacos, which these are like legit tacos
'cause you'd come in and be like, "Oh it's a liquor store,
"they got this, they got that,"
it's like how good are the tacos really?
They're good ass tacos, it just shows
how like, invested you are and how much love you put
in your food 'cause I, 'cause we tasted it.
- I appreciate it a lot that you guys came by
and checked us out.
You see we're very small, kind of hidden.
My team's back there always putting in the work
and I'm glad that was able to come out
and you guys were able to taste it in the food.
- I'm inspired and I'm like, excited
that there's people like you that are
taking on passing the torch and keeping it going
for the food scene here and everything else too,
so thank you so much.
- Anybody else that's out there that's listening,
go and support, go and support your local businesses.
- How can this experience get any more Chicago?
- Have you ever had Malort?
- I have not actually.
- He has not had Malort.
- He hasn't had Malort.
- He can't leave.
- That doesn't need to happen.
- We're not letting him go.
- Taking anything out of a liquor store
slash taqueria.
- Slash butcher shop.
- Slash pet store, I don't know.
- Chicago!
- Chicago.
Oh God!
(Eli coughing)
That's good, that's good as hell.
I should've known off the plastic top
how good it was gonna be.
- [Javier] Oh my God!
- [Eli] Why does it stay on my tongue?
- [Javier] Exactly!
- [Eli] It's staying in the back of my throat!
(upbeat hip hop)
- [Child] Pero Like.