• Michael Gebert

I went into Gaudi Cafe, a Ukrainian Village restaurant I’d been to with my family a few times, to check on the progress of a new restaurant from the same owners. Instead it looked like this one was closing. Art had come off the colorful walls. The counter was stacked with boxes. “This is our last day,” said co-owner Verònica Pineau.

  • Gaudi Cafe
  • Verònica and Betty.

Then called Gaudi Coffee and Grill, it was the kind of polyglot restaurant with some of everything—Mexican food, burgers, salads, soups, wraps, pastas, and tapas at night—which often promises mediocrity. But they tried to make everything from scratch, not using food-service shortcuts, and from the start the good things were pretty good. Chilaquiles became the signature item, but they also sold a lot of salads in a neighborhood where salad was a rare delicacy. And the atmosphere was sunny and friendly, with local artists selling their art off the brightly painted walls. Art was always part of the restaurant’s atmosphere, starting with the name, which was taken from the Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudí, and Betty sees the gallery side as part of connecting with the community: “We have a party for the artist, if they know somebody who does music, they put on the music. If somebody’s looking at something we say, you like it, you can make payments—$10, $20. And the artists say, ‘Wow, you sold a lot.’”

Opening two restaurants might seem enough to be involved with for the short term, but Betty says they’re always trying to learn about new things to make the restaurants better—she’s been taking classes at Intelligentsia to improve their coffee (an important consideration for a place whose busiest time is still Sunday morning breakfast), and has been looking into taking culinary courses. She also says that her and Verònica’s mom, who still lives in Mexico City, is going to culinary school with an eye on an extended visit to the new location. She says that’s how it’s been for their family since their father died: “We don’t come from a very rich family. Everything that we do is by ourselves. When my father passed away I was 14 and [Verònica] was 11. Something like that can make you weak, but my mother made us stronger. She said, ‘Now that he’s not here, we have to make it ourselves.’”