Carpentersville’s first Mexican restaurant reaches landmark 40-year anniversary

Gustavo Soto never aspired to become a restaurateur. It just kind of happened. He was working as a construction supervisor in the early 1980s when he mentioned to his in-laws, Kurt and Margita Steinmaier, that their Dog n Suds restaurant in Carpentersville would make a good location for something different. “I told my father-in-law we could convert it into a Mexican restaurant. He went along with it,” Soto said. In the mid-1980s, “there weren’t that many Mexican restaurants, especially out here,” Soto said. “We took a chance because there was...