Meche’s Moment

Tucked into a quiet corner of the Millpond Village shopping center, near the Publix off Kildaire Farm Road, Meche Cocina Mexicana doesn’t announce itself.

There’s no flashy signage competing for attention. You could drive past it a dozen times and never know what’s waiting inside. But walk through the door, and it quickly becomes clear why word has spread: Meche is doing something few restaurants in the Triangle attempt, and accomplishing it with meticulous, personal care.

Delia Kloefkorn anchors it all, owning 51 percent of the restaurant and setting out from the start to create a place people would want to visit time and again. Softspoken but warm, she talks about Meche less like a business and more like a calling.

“I had the crazy idea of wanting to open a Mexican restaurant because my husband and I love quality food,” says Delia, a native of Jalisco, Mexico. “I was just not happy with the existing local options for Mexican cuisine.”

That dissatisfaction became the catalyst for Meche. Delia brought her husband, a physician, into the idea, and the two began imagining a restaurant that didn’t rely on the familiar Americanized Mexican menu found elsewhere, known for deep-fried combination platters and interchangeable enchilada plates. She wanted something rooted more directly from her home country.

The tender beef birria makes these succulent tacos worth the mess.

The turning point came during a trip to Mexico City, where Delia and her husband fell in love with a single restaurant. Rather than simply admiring the food from a diner’s seat, the couple reached out to the chef directly. She and her sister-in-law (more on her a bit later) returned for 10 days, working alongside him in his kitchen. When Meche neared its opening, they flew the chef to North Carolina to train the staff in person.

The eatery’s bill of fare captures Mexico’s regional diversity rather than a single flattened idea of Mexican food.

Small plates hold their own against anything else on the menu. The smoky tlacoyos are built on fried, hand-pressed corn cakes stuffed with refried beans, then topped with a pepita spread, smoked swordfish escabeche, quinoa, and avocado — a dish that manages to feel both rustic and refined at once. The tuna tostadas take a lighter approach: two blue corn tostadas piled with guacamole, thinly sliced rare tuna, crispy leeks, and chipotle mayo, finished with pickled onion for a bright, acidic snap.

The colossal La Cemita provides reason enough to plan a lunch visit. Stacked onto a fluffy La Farm Bakery bun, the sandwich combines a breaded chicken cutlet with melted Oaxaca cheese, avocado, arugula, tomato, red onion, chipotle mayo, and a fiery house chipotle in adobo, arriving with a side of french fries and a size that could easily satisfy two people. It’s only available at lunchtime and Saturday brunch, which may be for the best. Indulge in one too often, and you’d need to loosen your belt.

Mole enchiladas draw from Oaxacan tradition, steeped in a sauce with nearly 30 ingredients, incorporating nuts, dark chocolate, dried chiles, and warm spices simmered into something deep and complex. It’s a dish, Delia says, that people either fall for immediately or need time to understand. The tacos, by contrast, are simpler, punchier, built for speed and flavor rather than layers.

Delia Kloefkorn makes the rounds, checking in with guests like old friends.

Speaking of the tacos, popular options include the quesabirria: crispy corn tortillas filled with slow-braised beef birria, cheese, onions, and cilantro, served alongside a rich birria broth for dipping. The skirt steak tacos, crowned with melted cheese, pico de gallo, and avocado on flour tortillas, command their own devoted following.

A seasonal chile en nogada involves a roasted poblano stuffed with spiced ground beef, pork, apple, peach, and pear, topped with a walnut-goat cheese sauce and pomegranate seeds. When it disappears from the menu each year, the Meche staff hears about it.

“That’s the dish people get upset about when it goes away,” she reveals. “It’s dependent on the pomegranate seeds being available.”

Dessert gets no less devotion. Meche, as it turns out, isn’t just the restaurant’s name — it’s also what Delia and her family affectionately call her mother, Mercedes, who spent months helping refine the churro recipe until it was right. They’re served with house-made chocolate and berry sauces. And the transcendent flan carries hints of hibiscus and fresh fruit. When asked what makes the flan special, Delia replies, “It might be the lime zest.”

Nothing at Meche is an afterthought, not even the irresistible Tajin-inflected chips and salsa that arrive to guests before anything else.

Every cocktail at Meche starts with fresh-squeezed juices, quality spirits, and no shortcuts.

The bar takes the same uncompromising approach as the kitchen, and the margaritas prove it. “We use fresh-squeezed lime, quality tequila, and real agave syrup, with no shortcuts standing in for flavor,” Delia explains.

Among the cocktails, the Mi Oaxaca leads the pack, a top-shelf margarita built on Creyente mezcal, mandarin orange, and lime, arriving at the table with a smoking cinnamon stick perched on top that perfumes the drink as it’s set down. Beyond the classics, the cocktail list wanders into more adventurous territory: a dragon fruit hibiscus margarita, a rotating Margarita de Sabor with flavors like passionfruit, mango, and tamarind, and a Paloma fashioned with blanco tequila, Aperol, grapefruit juice, and a splash of Jarritos grapefruit soda.

To help shape the drink list, Delia consulted with Jordan Joseph, the beverage director at Crawford Hospitality, but the concept, and every drop in the glass, remains distinctly Meche’s own.

Long before any food or drinks ever reached a table, Delia faced a significant challenge: finding a landlord willing to rent to a first-time restaurateur. The search dragged on for nearly two years, growing so discouraging that she nearly abandoned the idea altogether in favor of a food truck. Then, just as she was ready to give up, one finally said yes.

Meche opened in the summer of 2025, and the early months tested her resolve. Some days, only a few tables were filled.

“It felt embarrassing and stressful,” she admits. But the guests who did come kept coming back, and they told their friends.

The growth built steadily, month after month, until early May of this year, when a social media influencer with a large following posted a video hailing Meche as the best Mexican restaurant in North Carolina. The response was immediate.

“Cinco de Mayo was absolutely crazy,” says Delia. “On Mother’s Day we were booked up with reservations, and we still had a long wait list of walk-ins.”

Family sits at the heart of Meche. Delia’s brother, Fran Ponce, co-owns the restaurant alongside her. “He genuinely loves people, and they love him back,” Delia says fondly. “He has a way of making everyone feel welcome and at home.”

Her sister-in-law, Lupita Garcia, serves as sous chef. “She works incredibly hard behind the scenes every single day and is the heart of the kitchen,” Delia notes. She also credits Lupita with recruiting a team of genuinely kind, capable people. “We hold high standards, and we expect them to take good care of our guests,” Delia says.

Those standards come from a real sense of responsibility Delia feels toward every person who walks through the door.

“When people come in, they’ve chosen to spend their money here, so we want to make sure we provide a positive experience,” she explains. And on the rare occasion something goes wrong, there’s a go-to remedy: “When we do mess up, we try to fix it with some churros.”

Chef Elias Gallegos completes the core team. “His talent, consistency, and leadership are a huge part of what makes Meche what it is,” Delia says.

Working with relatives hasn’t strained the family; it’s strengthened it.

“I have a closer relationship with my brother than before opening the restaurant,” shares Delia.

That same warmth extends to the community. Meche partners with local organizations including the Mama Edna Project thrift store, Healing Transitions, Briarcliff Elementary, and Roots with Purpose, donating 10 percent of net sales every Thursday to support families facing food insecurity.

Through it all, Delia returns to the same guiding idea: honoring where she’s from without losing what makes it feel like home to Cary, too.

“We wanted to bring traditional Mexican food that we like and enjoy. Just elevated,” she reflects.

It’s a promise she keeps one plate, one cocktail, and one grateful regular at a time.

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