Il Mito chef will open a Mexican restaurant on the west side

Il Mito chef Michael Feker and his wife, Maricela, are opening an all-day Mexican restaurant called 2 Mesa, in the Martin Drive neighborhood on Milwaukee's west side.

The restaurant will be at 4110 W. Martin Drive at W. Highland Blvd., in an English Tudor-style building that previously housed Birdie's Cafe and Highland Pies. It's within walking distance of the Harley-Davidson headquarters and Miller Brewing plant and offices on Highland.

And that's why, Michael Feker said, 2 Mesa will be an all-day restaurant, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner (likely only breakfast and lunch on Sundays). The location would be convenient to workers from the nearby businesses, he said, and at night, it could attract residents from nearby neighborhoods, including Washington Heights in Milwaukee and Washington Highlands and other areas of eastern Wauwatosa.

Some refurbishing of the 1927 building is underway now. Feker said elements of the English Tudor style are similar to Mexican colonial architecture; he plans to keep the building's features like the tile floor in the sunroom and the layout of small rooms — "I think that's the charm of the whole place," he said. But he's putting in a larger window at the building's front to let in more light and constructing a larger bar.

In the morning, it would be a coffee and juice bar; afternoons and evenings, it would serve cocktails.

The restaurant, which Feker expects to open in late December, would serve what he calls "simple foods that are really sophisticated and layered," with some recipes coming from his wife's family. Mesa is Spanish for table; the name is a reference to the dining table at home and at the restaurant, Feker said.

Prices would range from about $2 for some tacos to about $17. The menu would include dishes such as carne asada and tacos árabes, a style of marinated pork cooked on a vertical rotisserie.

The breakfast menu would include chilaquiles and other favorites of Maricela Feker's, who grew up in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Michael Feker met his future wife in 1998, when he had opened the first Il Mito at S. 6th and W. Virginia streets (now closed) and she was working at her brother Hector Jimenez's restaurant, Azteca, on S. 5th St. (Azteca has since closed, and Jimenez now operates La Chiminea in Germantown.)

"Maricela's been teaching me so much," Michael Feker said.