New Mexican Restaurant Has 5,000 Square Feet
Guelaguetza Restaurante Y Barra is now open on National Avenue.
Guelaguetza Restaurante Y Barra, 2537 W. National Ave. Photo taken Jan. 13, 2026 by Sophie Bolich.
A popular Milwaukee taqueria recently expanded with a new southside location. Guelaguetza Restaurante Y Barra welcomed its first guests in late December at 2537 W. National Ave.
The bar and restaurant is the latest project from proprietor Lucia Antonio Perez, who also operates restaurants at 1039 W. National Ave. and 3902 S. Whitnall Ave., along with several food trucks.
Like existing locations, the new Guelaguetza specializes in authentic Mexican cuisine, offering a wide variety of tacos, tortas, tlayudas and other traditional street foods. Fillings include al pastor, asada, birria and alambre—chopped, grilled meat mixed with bacon, bell peppers, onions and melted cheese.
The restaurant also features burritos, tostadas, mole, seafood and pollo en amarillo, a braised chicken soup, with additional items such as whole rotisserie chickens and ceviche advertised on social media.
In recent months, Antonio Perez has transformed the Clarke Square building, formerly home to La Cueva, into a colorful standout on the southside thoroughfare, adding fresh paint in Guelaguetza’s signature colors—orange and yellow—along with new signage.
Inside, the 5,000-square-foot restaurant includes two dining areas separated by a custom bar, plus a large wood dance floor with a disco ball and stage available for private events. The space also features multiple large screen TVs, a pool table and several amusement machines.
Guelaguetza’s public entertainment premises license allows bands, DJs and dancing only during private events—an amendment added at the request of License Committee members. The license also stipulates that alcohol may only be served while the kitchen is open.
The oversight is a response to Guelaguetza’s predecessor, La Cueva, which closed in early 2025 after the City of Milwaukee denied its license renewal. The unanimous decision followed reports of multiple shootings, fights, overcapacity and underage drinking during its first 12 months in business.
Esmeralda Gonzalez Antonio, LLC, registered to Antonio Perez, purchased the building in May 2025, shortly after La Cueva’s departure.
The neighboring building, 2531 W. National Ave., also houses a Mexican restaurant. Mr. Taco, a popular food truck, established its flagship brick-and-mortar there in February 2025.
For daily hours and news about upcoming events, visit the restaurant’s Facebook page.
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Some additional history to add to Sophie’s piece. Growing up on this block long ago, this building housed Becker’s tavern, which also had a two lane bowling alleys. On a block of working class and low-class bars, Beckers was on the high end. Directly across 26th Street was the National Liquor Bar, aka “Sol’s,” with its world-famous pouring bottle sign. Next to Sol’s was a chiropractor whose sign claimed that he could cure just about any disease known to man. Even in that more innocent time, these claims raised suspicions.
Then there was the National Coffee Shop, run by my evil aunt, where, as a 9-year old, I was employed to sweep up, fill the sugar bowls and dump the trash. The only job I’ve ever been fired from in my entire life. My sweeping around the stools didn’t meet her standards and I was terminated for cause.
This was not my first job on National Avenue. As 2nd graders, my friend Connie and I would shine shoes in the bars on the street (25 cents for a “genuine spit shine”) and make a lot of money on Friday and Saturday nights. As 7 and 8-year olds, we also had successful businesses selling expiring bus passes on Saturday nights and collecting and returning deposit bottles in the rail yards in the Valley, where the Milwaukee Road cops said they would tie us to the tracks and run us over with a locomotive if they ever caught us there again. (We took it to be an empty threat and continued our environmentally beneficial, and marginally profitable, activities, even if no one had ever heard of the environment yet.)
Directly across National Avenue was the National Theatre, a true movie palace that showed all of the current movies and had a soundproof “crying room” for mothers with babies. Across 26th Street, opposite the new Guelaguetza was SLOGA, the fraternal assistance group for Yugoslav Slovenian immigrants like my parents.
All ancient history, but as the new restaurant shows, and as Mark Twain said, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.