Another Makeover for 27th Street Restaurant

A restaurant across the street from Wheaton Franciscan Hospital is undergoing its second makeover this year.

Woodside Pub & Eatery, which just opened in June at 10166 S. 27th St., has closed and will be replaced by Mazatlan Mexican Restaurant.

It's not clear when the new restaurant, which was granted an alcohol license by the Oak Creek Common Council last week, will open. It appears some renovation work (including a new paint job) is under way.

The new owners couldn't be reached for comment. No one was around when Patch stopped by Monday afternoon; the phone number listed to the business is disconnected.

Whenever the new owners open their doors, they will have their work cut out for them.

The location at the south end of S. 27th Street has its challenges, as the history of that building would indicate. Greco's Pub & Eatery was the restaurant operating there at the beginning of 2012 before the owners sold the business to Francisco and Leslie Montiel, making this the third change in a year.

The Montiels told me they struggled to get business from hospital workers. And there's not much other development around it, limiting the amount of traffic that drives by.

Speaking of the Montiels, it's too bad they evidently weren't able to make it. They met in the mid-1990s when Francisco was a cook and Leslie a waitress at a Milwaukee restaurant, and it had long been their dream to open a place of their own.

The Montiels tried to make the restaurant more family-friendly than Greco's, but the interior stayed mostly the same, and I wonder if people still saw the place as a bar that also happened to serve food.

The couple did change up the menu, bringing in new pasta and Mexican dishes. The food received good initial feedback from Patch readers, while other parts of the restaurant got mixed reviews.

But just four months after unveiling the new Woodside Pub & Eatery name, the restaurant is gone, to be replaced by another.

I will pass along more details on Mazatlan Mexican Restaurant as I get them.