La Paloma Restaurant on 22nd Avenue has been feeding Kenosha’s Latino community since the early 1990s, and Gloria Reyes has been behind the stove for most of that time.
I found out about the place the way a lot of people do — a coworker mentioned it in passing, the way you mention something you assume everyone already knows. I drove past it twice before I spotted it, a low-slung building on the south side with a hand-painted sign and a parking lot that’s always more crowded than you’d expect for a weekday lunch. I walked in, sat down at a laminate table next to a window overlooking 22nd, and ordered the tamales because someone told me I had to.
Gloria has been making those tamales since before some of her regulars were born. She came to Kenosha from Michoacán in the late eighties and started cooking at La Paloma not long after. The masa is thick and a little coarse in a way that feels intentional — not the dense, gummy kind you get at places that have scaled up, but the kind that still tastes like someone worked it by hand that morning. The red pork filling is deeply savory, seasoned with dried chiles that she won’t name specifically when you ask, just smiles and says it takes a while to get right.
I’ve been back four times now. I’ve tried the pozole rojo, the enchiladas verdes, and a plate of huevos rancheros on a Sunday that honestly justified the whole drive. But the tamales are the thing. Order two, and then order two more because you’ll want them. They run about $3.50 each, which is about right for this part of town and this level of care.
The room itself is small — maybe twelve tables — and decorated with the kind of cheerful mismatched folk art that accumulates over decades rather than being chosen all at once. There’s a Virgin de Guadalupe near the register, a calendar from a Mexican grocery two years out of date on the wall, a radio in the kitchen that plays norteño most afternoons. It is not a designed space. It is a real one.
Gloria’s daughter Maria works the front during lunch, and she’ll check on you more than you expect in a place this busy. The lunch crowd skews heavily toward construction workers, families with kids in tow, and a rotating cast of older men who appear to have reserved the same corner booth through some unspoken agreement. Dinner is a little quieter. Weekend mornings, when they sometimes do a menudo that’s not always on the menu, the place fills up by 9 a.m.
Cash is preferred here, though they do take cards. Lunch plates run $10–$14. Parking is free in the lot. The south side of Kenosha doesn’t always get written up, but La Paloma is exactly the kind of place that keeps a neighborhood eating well, and Gloria Reyes is exactly the kind of cook worth knowing about.
