Authentico Mexican Restaurant & Bar

The Restaurant

Authentico Mexican Restaurant & Bar opened in 2012 at 770 North Western Avenue under two Lake Forest families who wanted to bring scratch-cooked traditional Mexican to the North Shore without resorting to the casual-chain format. The room is warm and unhurried — Saltillo tile floors, hand-painted talavera, a long bar running the length of the south wall, and a covered patio that opens for warmer evenings — and seats around ninety across the main room, the bar, and the patio. The kitchen runs under the founding family's daily oversight and the room has become the standing favourite for Lake Forest weeknight family dinners and small team gatherings.

The kitchen makes its own corn tortillas, salsas, and moles from scratch every morning. Signatures include the carne asada tacos on hand-pressed corn tortillas, a pollo en mole poblano cooked over four days, a seafood Veracruz with red snapper and capers, the chiles en nogada in season, a tableside guacamole prepared in the molcajete, and a slow-braised barbacoa de res that has been on the menu since opening. The brunch programme — chilaquiles, huevos divorciados, a torta cubana — runs Saturday and Sunday and has a working following of its own.

The bar holds a serious tequila and mezcal programme with about ninety labels across reposado, añejo, extra añejo, and small-producer agave spirits from Oaxaca, Jalisco, and Guerrero. The margarita programme — classic, spicy, mezcal, hibiscus — is the bar's working signature, and the cocktail list extends with a Mexican-coffee programme and a Paloma flight for the table. Service is warm, family-led, and unhurried — the kitchen will accommodate a slower table and pace the courses around the conversation. For a Lake Forest team dinner or weeknight family table that needs to feel generous without being formal, Authentico is the city's standing answer.