New Mexican restaurant with ties to popular downtown eatery opens in west Lawrence

Owner Jose Pepe Lopez in the dining room of Acapulco Mexican Restaurant in west Lawrence.

If my wife and I decided to start a business where we had to share space in the kitchen, the specialty of the house would be earplugs. But a desire to work with his wife and children was one of the driving forces behind Jose Pepe Lopez’s decision to open a new Mexican restaurant in west Lawrence.

Acapulco Mexican Restaurant opened a couple of weeks ago in the shopping center at Bob Billings Parkway and Wakarusa Drive. For the last couple of years Lopez had been looking for a location downtown to open a small Mexican market that would sell food and drink items for people to make their own Latin creations. But he never could find the right spot or for the right price, so he shifted gears and went back to his restaurant roots.

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Lopez for several years has been part of the group that operates Cielito Lindo in downtown Lawrence. But that restaurant was missing something: Lopez’s family.

“My wife has been wanting to work for quite awhile, but she hasn’t been able to because of the kids and the language barrier,” Lopez said. “Now we can all work together. My kids want to work and they are happy to work.”

Everybody in the family has a role, including one of the older children who watches the youngest member of the family, a 3-year old. Lopez’s role is in the kitchen. Lopez admits the menu for Acapulco is very similar to the menu for Cielito Lindo. But he also notes that he’s prone to experimentation in the kitchen. If he hears from diners that they would like a little something different, he’s game for taking requests.

“I like to do things that go beyond the menu,” Lopez said. “Some cooks go by the book only. But if I have the ingredients to make it, I will try to make it.”

The menu as it is, though, already is large. It, of course, includes all the traditional tacos, burritos and enchiladas. But it also has some more complex dishes. The menu includes about a dozen seafood dishes, with a heavy emphasis on shrimp but also several dishes with fish and scallops. The lunch menu includes four egg dishes, including the traditional huevos rancheros and the less common huevos divorciados. Yes, that sounds like a dish that would be on the menu if my wife and I ran a restaurant. However, the recipe does not include alimony and me living in a cardboard box. Rather, it is one over-easy egg covered in green sauce, one over-easy egg covered in red sauce, and beans and tortillas.

Lopez said perhaps the best dish in the restaurant also may be a surprise to some, in part, because it doesn’t come wrapped in a tortilla or a shell. It is pollo fundido, which is a Mexican-style chicken breast served with rice, beans, chorizo and cheese sauce.

If you want something in a tortilla, though, Lopez is pretty proud of the tacos pepe, which are named after him. Those are three tacos filled with steak, chorizo, and pico de gallo. There is also a version that comes with pineapples and onions.

Then there is the salsa. Meals are served with three varieties and three colors — a jalapeno, a habanero and a tomatillo salsa. This sounds great, but for someone like me who is required to coordinate his ties with the color of the salsa, it requires a lot of changing just to get through one basket of chips.

Lopez said so far the idea of bringing his family under one roof to work together has worked out as planned.

“It is good,” he said. “It definitely feels like a family restaurant. We are all here to support each other.”