Our Story

It all begins with an idea.

At least for us, the seeds of the idea of opening a small, creative, and locally sourced restaurant were planted in odd places; my mother was an art historian who was an amazing cook. She wrote about art history, culture, and the intersection of these with cuisine. She taught me early on about local, responsible, no-corporate agriculture and sourcing of ingredients, as well as creative utilization of these. Many years later, living in lower Manhattan I developed friendships with a number of chefs and restaurant owners, viewing operations from the “back of house” perspective. I was a contractor and often assisted these friends with necessary kitchen renovations and equipment repairs. By that time, I had my own love of creatively preparing and presenting food. Meeting my future wife, Jessenia, who had an interesting culinary background from her Cuban and Chinese parents presented a horizon of possibilities in that regard. We began imagining what our idea of opening our own restaurant might look like. This process of visualization, so necessary to any creative endeavor, occupied us up until our move to the Texas Hill Country in 2013. We stumbled on an old building in a wooded property that was for sale, nicer than what we had ever envisioned but sorely in need of extensive renovations. After a year of doing the work that I knew well, we opened Jobell Cafe & Bistro. Those early days were full of challenges; menu design, staffing, developing an identity and presence in our small community and fine-tuning our culinary concepts to meet the reality of actually running a business without compromising our principles. We’ve been at it for 8 years now, well-seasoned by triumphs and failures alike. What has come from all of this, and I think this applies to other art forms as well, is that what ultimately emerges from such careful plans and hard work may sometimes look different from one’s original idea, and could never really be anticipated but in many ways is so much better. We founded Jobell Cafe & Bistro on simple concepts; namely respect for the ingredients we use, and the guests that we will be offering our cuisine, plus a passion for what we do that goes beyond just marketing and a business plan. We believe, especially with such a fundamental human construct as serving food to guests, that one must approach it with love and honesty. We named Jobell after our children (Josh and Bell) who were 6 and 3 when we opened the restaurant. I designed and renovated the restaurant while my wife Jessenia and our lovely friend, Apollo Andrade, produced our first menus. My culinary ideas were incorporated (I ate a lot of wonderful test kitchen dishes!), but what we started was founded on this loving and hard-working, creative effort between all of us. What we do, each and every day is try to remain true to this spirit, in the care and respect for our team members, our guests, and the food we bring to the table. We believe in a world that champions individual human values above corporate constructs and try to reflect this without pretense or falsehood. What we actually do, and is what drew us to choose this as a career, is to provide a space, a context, for conviviality…the sharing of stories and special moments over good food and wine, the face-to-face exchanges that bind us as human beings. That is what Jobell is and what we are so proud of.

- David and Jess