Most days, you can find Cindy Mendoza and Matt Pospiech in the dining room at the Piggery slinging nachos, wings, burgers, and sass.
“I’m always talking crap,” says Mendoza, “because I’m an asshole sometimes.”
“Cindy’s got no filter,” agrees Pospiech. “And that’s why I love her. She takes no bullshit.”
A compatible appetite for mouthiness sustained their friendship over the last decade after they both started working at Pospiech’s father’s Lakeview sports bar.
Pospiech had just graduated from the University of Kansas, where he ran a pop-up taqueria selling tacos to drunk frat boys. He started out working prep in the kitchen, but in 2016, he moved up to general manager. “That was right before the Cubs made their run,” he says. “Things got real crazy for a little bit there.”
Mendoza is the Piggery’s bar manager and a prodigious home cook. And though they both found common ground in the front of the house, they began cooking together during the pandemic and posting to social media with a scratch inventiveness a few steps beyond the bar food they served at the Piggery—dishes like Nigerian beef suya with peanut spice rub or wild fennel shrimp cakes, with ’nduja yogurt, powdered capers, and preserved lemons.
“Part of the reason we started doing this is because I’ve always felt the menu at the Piggery is pretty basic,” says Pospiech. “I’m not hating on it. It’s been in business for 14 years and it does what it does well. We wanted our own thing.”
There were other motivations. “‘Maybe we need to actually find a way to make money doing this,” recalls Mendoza. In June 2023, they threw their first pop-up down the street at the Long Room under the name Loud Mouth.
“It’s just kind of a play on ‘You’re a loudmouth.’ ‘No, you’re a loudmouth,’” says Pospiech.
“We wanted a name that had nothing to do with food,” says Mendoza. “Because we don’t have a theme.”
“Kind of,” says Pospiech. “She always needs to have a Mexican thing every time.”
A theme of sorts did begin to emerge as more pop-ups followed. “A lot of our menus have really labor-intensive stuff,” he says. “We’re making our own pasta from scratch. We’re making our own hot dogs from scratch. We’re doing these tater tots with 30-40 layers of paper-thin sliced potatoes that we stack on top of each other.”
Pospiech generates ideas, while Mendoza reins him in. “She will absolutely tell me if the food sucks,” he says. “She’ll be like, ‘No, we’re not doing that.’ And I’m like, ‘But it’s so interesting!’ One time we made a Greek hot dog that we were grinding, encasing, and smoking ourselves. It was a little too chewy, and she just said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re not selling this. We’re redoing this.’”
Pospiech’s father and his partners eventually invited Loud Mouth to stage their pop-ups at the Piggery itself, playing to an enthusiastic core of regulars. “The thing we love about the Piggery is that they are really open to all of our ideas,” Pospiech says. “We can use that kitchen as our own little lab to experiment.”
Though the goal is to open their own spot one day, they’re happy to make use of the Piggery’s resources to further that goal. Meanwhile, Pospiech has completely upgraded the Piggery’s menu, which debuts on January 2. But Loud Mouth’s repertoire is all its own. Those tater tots have become a signature. After they’re layered, they’re baked with heavy cream, pressed overnight, portioned, deep fried, and served with Spanish-style salsa brava, dehydrated chives, and a tangy chile-garlic powder.
So has the pasta: hand-rolled pici, with miso garlic butter, and sherry vinegar–sauteed mushrooms. Both are on the menu when Loud Mouth comes to Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern.
But that isn’t all. There are not one, but two Mexican things too: duck confit flautas with mole and pickled onions; and smoked pork belly al pastor tacos.
Yes, you read that right: bacon al pastor tacos with pineapple, salsa roja, radish, and queso fresco.
Loud Mouth goes off beginning at 6 PM this Monday, December 30—at 2905 N. Elston in Avondale.
And that’s the final Foodball of 2024. Look out for a brand new lineup in the first days of the new year.
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2024-12-26 15:11:41