The Story Behind Punta Cana Latin Grill in Athens, GA
You can walk into a place a dozen times and never really think about how it got there, it just feels like another spot in Athens. Just a place to grab food, sit for a bit, maybe try something different if you’re in the mood for it. Punta Cana sits a little off from everything else, tucked into its own corner. It doesn’t try too hard to stand out, but once you’re inside, it doesn’t really feel like Athens either. The food speaks for itself and if you’re paying attention, there’s a sense that it didn’t just appear here, it had to find its place.
Punta Cana Latin Grill opened back in 2019. Like a lot of new restaurants around that time, it didn’t really get a fair start. In the beginning, things were slow and stayed quiet longer than expected. It wasn’t until sometime after everything reopened that people really began to come in with any consistency. Even then, it wasn’t immediate. It took time before it started to feel steady. And yet the reason it exists at all was simple: there wasn’t anything like it here in Athens.
There were no Dominican restaurants in town. Nothing was close enough for most people to casually try. And for a lot of people walking in, there’s still a bit of confusion, assuming it’s something it’s not, or placing it into a category that feels familiar just to make sense of it.
‘‘Not every Latin restaurant is the same,’’ but when something is the only one of its kind in a town like Athens, it tends to carry that weight.
In the beginning, Punta Cana was smaller than what people see now. A few tables, a couple people in the kitchen, and a lot of work that didn’t really stop. There wasn’t enough coming in to hire help the way they wanted so most of it fell on whoever was there. Long days, figuring things out as they went, trying to keep something moving forward without knowing exactly when it would catch.
What people see now seems normal, like it’s always been this way, but somewhere along the line, things shifted.
There was a point where the partnership Punta Cana started with no longer existed, and with that came a lot of change, both personally, and in the way the restaurant had to operate. People left and the structure that was there at the beginning didn’t hold the same way anymore. For a while, it meant starting over in ways most people wouldn’t notice from the outside.
What started as a partnership is now a solo endeavor. Run by Steising Pascual, not just in name, but in responsibility, decision making, and the day-to-day weight of keeping something like this running.
You can feel it in the way Steising talks about it, not in a dramatic way but more emotionally. She knows exactly what it took to get here, and what it takes to keep it going.
At one point, she said something that stuck with me:
‘‘If it all ended tomorrow, I’ll be proud of it’’.
And yet she would also feel relieved. Not because it failed, but because of how much is asked of you to keep something like this alive.
That kind of honesty doesn’t show up on menus or in reviews. It’s easy to assume someone who runs a restaurant loves every part of it, but Steising will tell you herself, she’s not even that big on cooking at home. The business pulled her into it; taught her in ways she didn’t plan for and now it’s just part of what she does.
The more we talked I asked Steising, if I was someone new coming into Punta Cana what should I order?
She kept it simple. ‘‘Empanadas are usually the answer’’.
Something familiar to her while not needing to be over-explained.
Maybe that’s the thing about a place like this, it doesn’t try to present itself as more than it is, but it carries more than most people realize.
