Mother-and-son restaurant adds a ‘pozole flight’ to menu at new location

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What began as a weekend food stand in a living room has become Peke’s Pozole restaurant, a venture led by a Mexican mother and her Mexican American son. They just moved to a new location, just steps from the previous brick-and-mortar, located at 4710 S. Pulaski Rd.

Petra Guerrero, originally from Chilapa de Álvarez, Guerrero, Mexico, immigrated to Chicago 29 years ago, after her husband, and she never imagined that one day she would own a restaurant.

Guerrero worked in factories while raising her family. She didn’t go to culinary school, but soon discovered her gift “al ojito” (“by eye”), an expression used in Mexico to say that you add ingredients and spices without exact measurements until you get the right flavor.

On one occasion, Guerrero served pozole to one of her aunts, who liked the recipe so much that she asked her why she didn’t make the hearty, meaty hominy soup to sell.

Her business evolved organically, with Guerrero cooking on the weekends in her then home in the Gage Park neighborhood, at 58th Street and Trumbull Avenue.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

“First we started with a little table in the living room, then two, then three, selling pozole, flautas and patitas. We stayed like this for four years. When we started seeing customers forming a line outside the door, we decided to look for a place,” recalled Guerrero, affectionately called “Pequis” in her native Chilapa.

She decided to leave her factory job.

On May 17, 2018, Peke’s Pozole opened its doors at 4720 S. Pulaski Rd. in the Archer Heights neighborhood. The restaurant’s name evolved from Guerrero’s nickname “Peke.”

The menu grew to include tacos, picaditas, burritos and tortas, as well as red pozole (the home business had sold white and green pozole, the most common in Guerrero, Mexico).

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Jonathan Macedo, Petra’s youngest son and a Chicago native, recalled that since he was a child, he would help his mother arrange the chairs and tables for the home business. Although his brother and sister also helped, he became his mother’s right-hand man.

“Since I was 18, I have been completely dedicated to the restaurant. I know everything about the business,” he told La Voz.

“I know how to prepare all the dishes. I manage the finances. I take care of the employees; there are 20 of us in total including my mother and me. This became a passion that grew to what it is now and I am completely grateful to have been a part of it since I was a kid.”

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

They stayed in the original location for four years, weathering the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, pivoting to takeout orders.

“We found a way to maximize our profits, opening only from Friday to Sunday,” Macedo recalled.

At the new location, a jaguar on an interior mural and tiger-themed masks, part of the logo of Peke’s Pozole, pay tribute to Chilapa de Álvarez.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

These tigers are a reference to La Tigrada, a festival and ritual that is celebrated on Aug. 15 and has been carried out since pre-Hispanic times to ask Tláloc, the Aztec god of rain and lightning, for a rainy season and, therefore, abundance and prosperity.

A tradition that has been blended with Catholic beliefs, that day is also celebrated as the Day of the Assumption of the Virgin, when the inhabitants of Chilapa take to the streets dressed in yellow, like tigers or jaguars — the protectors of the mountain — with cardboard masks to thank Mother Earth, Tláloc and the Virgin de Guadalupe for the blessings received.

“The restaurant is like a gastronomic sample of Chilapa,” Guerrero said. “The No. 1 dish is pozole and everything we make is fresh, fresh the same day.”

Just a few months ago they added two new features to the menu: cocktails and the “pozole flight,” which allows customers to taste all three pozoles in one order.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

The green pozole is the one that, according to Guerrero, is the favorite of her clients. Other dishes include picaditas, which are similar to a “sope” made of corn dough and served with green, red and molcajete salsas, and which at Peke’s is served with toasted pumpkin seeds and cecina beef to taste.

With the opening of the new restaurant, Macedo paused his studies in culinary arts and hospitality at Kendall University, but he plans to return and apply what he learned in practice.

He would like to open an express restaurant concept near the area, possibly in Gage Park or West Lawn. “I want to make this as big as possible,” he beamed.

His mother said, “I am proud and happy of what we have achieved as a family, that people like our seasoning, because our recipes are quality.”

Macedo is clear that this is a family business and that now it is his turn to take it to the next level.

“My mother already worked a lot, now it’s my turn to work for her,” he said.