Gallery • 5 Photos

Layla Demir '24

COME IN: Walking into the restaurant, you are served with a basket of chips and salsa while looking over their delicious menu.

As soon as the mouth-watering Birria taco trend started popping up in my Instagram feed, I knew I had to try them, and I did, but somewhere I least expected to. Frontera, an authentic Mexican restaurant, has recently opened shop in what was previously Mimi’s Bistro located in Grosse Pointe Park off of Jefferson.

Wanting to go out to grab a quick bite to eat one quiet night during winter break with my boyfriend became a slight challenge. We didn’t want to drive too far, and we weren’t up for going somewhere expensive in our sweatpants and slippers.. We had discussed trying Frontera before this occasion, and we decided to take a chance on it because we were running out of time.

Walking in without any idea what type of cuisine we were about to indulge in, we were pleasantly surprised to see a completely transformed place. Without even glancing up at the huge blackboard menus covering the wall above the cash register, the delicious smells that escaped the kitchen, baskets of chips accompanied by salsa on the tables and the rich Spanish accent of the man who greeted us provided us with all the context we needed.

Their menu includes weekly specials, traditional Spanish dishes like the Birria tacos I couldn’t wait to order, and even some American staples like burgers and wings. The manager, Karen Carbanas, said that they specifically added some American dishes to the menu so their customers had more options to choose from.

“We have another restaurant, it’s called Amigos Street Tacos in St. Clair Shores and it became very popular there,” Carbanas said. “So that’s our main goal for here as well, and we noticed that there’s not a lot of Mexican food places here.”

I made the joke that we did have a new Taco Bell, although it was no match with the food that we ordered, which included three pillowy tacos, each neatly stacked and stuffed with plenty of meat, a side of refried beans, Spanish rice and plenty of coke to wash it all down with.

When our waitress, Josephine, came to clear our plates, I quickly asked her how business had been going so far. She mentioned that although they had only been open for a week, they filled up fast and hoped to change their hours soon to later and open up a bar that serves until two a.m.

“Right now, our hours are nine a.m. to ten p.m. Monday through Saturday and nine to eight on Sunday,” Josephine said.

Being an experienced waitress myself, I was curious to know how working in a family-owned restaurant is different from the typical job.

“I’ve worked in the food industry basically since I’ve been legally allowed to, but this is the first time I’ve worked in a family-owned Mexican restaurant,” Josephine said. “It’s like a closer-knit vibe, of course, in a typical restaurant, it’s a stressful environment, and it’s easy to get mad at people, but here, people work together more at the end of the day, and we’re cool with each other.”