Taco María Offshoot La Sirena Offers Mexican Cuisine in Rural Wisconsin

Driving up to Door County, Wisconsin, feels a lot like going to grandma’s house. The bucolic, woodsy peninsula, which juts like a thumbs-up from Green Bay into Lake Michigan, is known for postcard-perfect views, cherries, boat and bike rides, lighthouses, state parks, meandering Scandinavian farmland communities, and autumnal bonfires on endless shorelines where local beer flows like Great Lakes water. Since last summer, this “Cape Code of the Midwest” has drawn visitors from afar for high-minded Mexican fare.

With its slow-cooked duck tamales with almond-fig mole, carne en su jugo with devilish salsa macha, and towels full of warm tortillas laid on the table like a welcome mat, La Sirena impresses any diner willing to make the trek. Chef Carlos Salgado and his wife, Emilie Coulson Salgado, previously ran Taco María, which they opened in Orange County, California, in 2013. The restaurant held a Michelin star from 2019 to 2023, the LA Times named it Restaurant of the Year in 2018, Salgado was a James Beard finalist for Best Chef: California in 2023, and Esquire named Taco María one of the best restaurants of the decade, calling its brand of cuisine “disarmingly approachable and dizzyingly innovative.”

Then, when the lease came up in 2023, the couple closed Taco María and moved back to Coulson Salgado’s homeland — she grew up down the road from La Sirena in Fish Creek — in search of their Walden Pond, where they could find distance, perspective, and balance for their family and two young kids. But, after spending some time on the waterways and trails, a new restaurant sprouted organically. Now, their warm, comfy comida casera and their lakeside home woo travelers from all over the Midwest and the country.

As you approach the restaurant, your headlights might slice through the night and light up La Sirena, a rustic white outpost tucked between a stone library and an art gallery straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The building gives a country-built, woodsy, settled feeling, like it’s been and could be there forever, standing up to lake winds and changing ideas of what Mexican food can look like in Middle America.

Coulson Salgado may be there to greet you at the door and lead you into the homey, spare dining room. There are a handful of tables, marked with candles, and half a dozen bar seats, all of it minimal and subdued, as if the couple put all their thought cost toward the food and drink. The snaking guitar lines of Hermanos Gutiérrez slink through the air.

It’s one thing to say “children are always welcome,” as La Sirena’s website does, or play it off with a simple, “babysitters are expensive,” as Coulson Salgado says, as she pours coffee and monitors everything that’s happening in every corner of the restaurant. It’s another thing to actually like kids in your business. Family is at the center of what the Salgados do, and not in a nebulous, metaphoric way. (When Carlos heard that I was debating between visiting the restaurant alone or with my family, he apparently told Emilie, “They have to come.”)

In the off-season, the Salgados offer solace for the cold weather with a set menu focused around one comforting dish, culled from their family recipe book. On a recent night, an ensalada Caesar gracefully opened things in a manner bracingly crunchy, salty, and roe-y; the dish arrived under a fittingly snowy dusting of Sarvecchio, Wisconsin’s answer to Parmigiano-Reggiano. Deep, earthy carne en su jugo followed, offering a stewy mix of beef bavette, cherrywood bacon, tomatillo, and Mayocoba beans, all to be heaped upon heirloom tortillas. Almost as an afterthought, Coulson Salgado might ask, “Oh, do you want oysters?” and present a half dozen Prince Edward Island bivalves, topped with a fine dollop of hibiscus jelly. With its easy grace, the limited menu seems to almost dare visitors with the question: “What more could you possibly ask for?”

The spring brings the return of the restaurant’s three-season, four-course menu, with an emphasis on local produce and proteins. Always at the forefront are tortillas, which the Salgados nixtamalize in-house with maiz imported from heirloom varieties in Mexico. Past seasons have featured birria de cordero with chile guajillo, chard, coffee, and lime, or oyster aguachile with serrano and watermelon jam. There’s frequently pan birote, a house-made sourdough with refried beans, huitlacoche butter, and that signature salsa macha, which is sludgy and roasty, piquant and exhilarating on anything.

For the little ones, there are often off-menu, thick, gooey quesadillas, heartening sopa de fideo, and fizzy apple soda. This kids’ fare is far from a simple distraction while parents dial in. In fact, it’s hard for adults to resist ruining their appetites by swiping bites from their kids’ plates, while starting the night with salt-rimmed palomas, pineapple tepache Old Fashioneds, or Brazilian blonde ales.

However you fill up, make sure to close your meal with a French press made from beans roasted next door at Ephraim Coffee Lab.

Cutting north up I-43 from Milwaukee, or east on 29 from the Twin Cities, you’ll pass cornfields, fraying Trump signs, and barns both decrepit and fresh, representing various generations and centuries. Along the way there are lots of happy cows, Spotted Cows, and Land O’ Lakes farms. Pull over for Amish pies at a gas station, or find ubiquitous buttery remedy for any ill mood at Culver’s, where curds and a double deluxe are always a great pit stop. (If you miss the turnoff, don’t fret; there’s almost guaranteed to be another Culver’s at the next exit too.)

There’s a subtle vibe shift around Sturgeon Bay, the entrance to Door County and the largest of its 14 towns. You’ll still see Carhartt and Pabst signs aplenty, but the peninsula suddenly assumes a knowingly hip, Northern California-esque aura. Suddenly you’re in whitefish-tossing-distance of artisanal coffee, wood-fired pizza, microbrews, and cocktails that approach the realm of craft.

Depending on when you visit La Sirena, you’ll find a completely different restaurant. It has a sleepy allure during winter, especially in those melancholy, post-holidays, post-Packers days. But an ideal time is spring through fall, when fresh and local is the focus, the patio is open, the menu expands and varies, and you can have a comfortable, digestive stroll to the waterfront.

Note that a well-deserved break will keep La Sirena’s doors shuttered from the beginning of March until mid-April (or when “things start coming out of the ground,” as Salgado puts it).

Reservations can be made the week-of for a table or a bar spot. Let the owners know about dietary restrictions and if you’re bringing kids. Advice from experience: Just remember that you can keep ordering more quesadillas.

At the Birchwood Lodge in Sister Bay, the team seems uncertain what to make of the new Californians down the block in Ephraim. This is the kind of lodging that peppers the region: pleasantly sleepy, stoic, Scandinavian, Clinton-era. Its foremost virtue in the winter is cozy. Its second is hot tub. You’ll find similar feels afoot at the Scandinavian Lodge. Or you might want to try the Edgewater Resort, which is within stumbling distance of La Sirena, should your dinner run late.

What else to do, see, and eat around Door County

Al Johnson’s is characteristic of the area’s nostalgic bent. Waitresses wear traditional Swedish dresses and ferry trays of pancakes with lingonberries, meatballs, biscuits and gravy, and stronger-than-expected coffee. The wood-centric dining room yields panoramic lake views and an attached gift shop of bric-a-brac, while a seasonal beer garden makes for a sprawling testament to the area’s long lineage of Scandinavian settlers, dairy farmers, and their goats — which graze on the restaurant’s grass-covered roof in warmer months. Husby’s is another wood-paneled holdout. The watering hole operates from the afternoon into wee small hours, serving local curds, whitefish, and bar fare. The staff have a high tolerance for anyone with a high tolerance.

The area also has a new class of restaurants. Consider a spot like Sip: The cafe, decorated in Ikea chic gone mad, serves everything from Benedicts to smash burgers to schnitzel, with all-day coffee and bakery offerings; there’s even a chance the owner, originally from Sweden, might gift you some surplus imported candies. Or there’s Wild Tomato, a popular wood-fired pizzeria with two locations; it’s easy and casual, but comes with pretty serious San Marzano pedigree.

In between, Door County has a surplus of boutique, borderline-bougie waystations. After one trip, you’ll be more than covered for rocks, gems, quilts, syrup, and artisanal soap. If you’ve been to Vail, Napa, or Cape Cod, you get the schtick. But there’s also stunning natural beauty in the undulating limestone of the Niagara Escarpment, best enjoyed in the expansive Peninsula State Park.

Once you hit the road, you may not want to stop at all. The area has curving, wooded roads straight out of a car commercial, the kind that make you want to rev the engine, even in a sensible Subaru. So keep going all the way to the tip of the thumb. Maybe even take a ferry past the shipwreck-strewn passage of “Death’s Door” to Washington Island, the northernmost point, home to one of the largest, oldest Icelandic communities in the U.S.

Anywhere you pull in, all along Wisconsin, you’ll find a drink, a bite, someplace to put your feet up, and a communal feel that makes the drive worth it. In that sense, La Sirena is the perfect embodiment of its home.