Former Sands chef losing taqueria but is still hopeful

William Jacobs rings up a handful of credit cards behind the cash register of La Cabaña. In the Mexican restaurant’s buzzing belly, his most loyal patrons converse about work and weekend plans.

It’s about 1 p.m. on a recent Wednesday at the popular lunchtime haunt in the 500 block of Martin Luther King Drive. It’s the tail-end of the day’s busiest stretch, but it’s clear the 53-year-old owner is used to this kind of pressure. He coolly delivers checks to his customers with a smile.

Before Jacobs bought La Cabaña in 2006, the restaurant welcomed guests under different owners for more than a decade. During that time, Jacobs worked as the executive chef of the Sands Expo Convention Center, orchestrating the prepping, cooking and serving of meals for as many as 14,000 guests at a single banquet dinner.

“It was tough, dude,” said Jacobs, sitting in a corner booth, sipping a tall iced tea as the crowd clears from the restaurant and heads back to work. “Here, it’s very different.”

The road to owning and operating La Cabaña was a path Jacobs did not expect to take. When the Colorado native — who studied the culinary arts in Arizona before living and cooking in different parts of Mexico — left the Las Vegas Sands in 2001, he decided to try his hand at real estate. The crumbling of the real estate market forced the certified chef to reassess his options.

“When the slump came,” Jacobs said, “it made sense to come back.”

With his decision to re-enter the restaurant game, Jacobs decided to offer the most authentic menu he could manage. That meant buying all his food locally — excluding fish, which comes from California. Every week, with the help of his wife, Jacobs scours local markets like Cardenas and Mariana’s for the best prices. He sometimes shops at Costco — unless he can find his supplies cheaper elsewhere.

Jacobs recently purchased a case of avocados for about $35. But he recently bought another case with the same number of avocados — about 48 — for $15. “That’s how small businesses save money,” Jacobs said.

And in a tight economy, Jacobs had to save as much money as he could.

In better times, he recalled, throngs of construction workers — traveling from many of the multi-million-dollar projects on the Strip during the most prosperous and productive construction booms in Las Vegas history — made their way to La Cabaña, spending a lot money.

In Jacobs’ memory, it wasn’t unusual for a party of five to 10 people to spend from $500 to $1,000 in a single sitting.

When the housing bubble collapsed and construction jobs dried up on the Strip, the business stopped showing up. But Jacobs decided he would do what he could to survive.

“Before the economy tanked, La Cabaña competed with everybody,” Jacobs said. “We bled for like three years. When I say bled, I mean we were losing money every month.”

Jacobs eventually lowered the prices on the menu, and the economy began its slow recovery. But the timing couldn’t be any worse.

The collapse of the economy inspired an explosion of dozens of taqueria carts in the city’s northern neighborhoods — mobile taco carts with menus spanning the entire culinary history of Mexico. These carts are popular because their owners can afford to offer cheaper prices; there isn’t much overhead beyond the cost of food.

Jacobs said he would open a taqueria cart, if he saw any point in the business. The state recently sent him a letter, declaring it would buy his property through eminent domain. Within the next 18 months, La Cabaña will be destroyed to make room for a highway.

But the state’s purchase of his business isn’t the end for Jacobs. Going forward, he plans to expand a small group of restaurants dubbed “La Cabaña Express” in places like hospitals, grocery stories and elderly care facilities.

“I’m very bummed out, dude,” Jacobs said. “We made a conscious decision to survive. A lot of sacrifices were made. I had to sell a couple properties to maintain this place. A lot of my toys. Just to be able to keep this place open.”

Contact reporter Ed Komenda at ekomenda@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0270. Follow him on Twitter @ejkomenda.