About
staff-juans
My life has revolved around food for as long as I can remember. Growing up in California, my memories are of my mom and grandma always cooking. My family’s thing is carnitas. I remember when my uncle, Francisco, or as the family knows him, “Pancho,” got the family recipe for our carnitas. My dad brought back a huge copper pot from the village in Mexico where our family is from and we would have barbecues on the weekends in Fremont, Calif., and cook piles of carnitas. There’s a lot of dishes on my menu that have my family’s story to it. Like our carnitas. Those are Pancho’s carnitas.

I got my start in the restaurant business as a kid. The back story is that my dad is a risk-taker. I admire him for that and also for his work ethic. Dad taught me the value of hard work.

He was driving a truck in California and watching the neighborhood we lived in go downhill — the gangs were taking over and it was getting rough and my mom’s health was suffering from the smog — and he had a friend who opened a restaurant in North Carolina. This was the early ‘90s. So the short story is Dad decided he was taking us out of California. He hops on a plane and goes to North Carolina to check it out and drove up to Williamsburg and decided that was the place.

staff-juan-barWe moved out here in 1992 and opened a restaurant in Williamsburg. We did everything as a family and so we worked together in the restaurant. It was a legit family business: Mom, Dad, me, my brother and sisters. My dad branched out and opened more restaurants in North Carolina, the Eastern Shore, upper Maryland. He still has them. I learned so much about the restaurant business, about food and people. I have tons of good memories working as a family in the restaurant. Some kids go to the movies and stuff. I was busing tables and working in the kitchen. Building my future.

Things that are really important to me in my restaurants are, of course, the taste of the food. It’s got to be something different, something that makes us stand out. I think back to my grandpa back in Mexico and his cattle he raised. That was a way of living for him. You raised those animals. You put that love into the animal and it gives back — my grandmother made cheese and the animal was super important in many different ways. This is as close to farm to table as you can get. You can trace the beef not only right back to the ranch, but you also know its genetics and literally who its grandpa was.

Other things that are important to me are cultivating an atmosphere where people want to come back — like coming home. Like they are wanted here.

It’s huge for me to be local, sustainable, socially aware and responsible. And it’s important to me to give back to the community, to help the community one way or the other. Education is also a big thing to me and whenever I do things with kids, I tell them to stay in school because they are our future.

At the end of the day though, what makes me really happy is seeing other people happy. That’s what I live off of. I’m a simple guy and seeing other people happy in my restaurants makes me want to keep doing it more.

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Juan's Team

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Alonzo Calvillo

Assistant Manager
Newport News

How many people do you know who have “guacamole guy” on their resume? Alonzo does, along with busboy, dishwasher, cook and any other job you can have in a restaurant.

Alonzo hails from Morelia in Michoacan state in Mexico and likes getting to know the customers at Juan’s, as he says to “have a little chat with them.” He knows people by what they eat and drink, until they order something different. “That’s when they’ve got me,” he says. For Alonzo, a good meal is sitting down to chilaquiles.
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staff-lorenzo

Lorenzo Frigeros

Chef
Newport News

Lorenzo has cooked great food at Juan’s for eight years. Originally from El Salvador, Lorenzo loves to cook and it shows. His specialty, as we’re sure you’ve noticed, is salsa.

He makes all the salsa at Juan’s, working his flavor magic with the jalapeño, ancho and chipotle peppers. While salsa is his thing to make, when it comes to his thing to eat Lorenzo loves a good steak with chorizo.
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Eliseo Jordan

Chef
Gloucester

Eliseo has been working at Juan’s for 10 years and fortunately for us, knows his way quite well around la cocina, or the kitchen. “I cook everything,” Eliseo says.

An interesting tidbit about Eliseo is that he is an expert cooking with spices, as we’re sure you can attest, but he doesn’t like eating spicy food. Go figure. He grew up in El Salvador watching his mother cook and we’re very happy about that. Eliseo loves music, especially romantic Mexican tunes.
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Diana Belanger

General Manager
Gloucester

Diana has been working at Juan’s since 2010, starting out as a server. She took on extra duties as well such as scheduling and working the weekend breakfasts for three years.

Originally from Bogota, Colombia, Diana has lived in the U.S. for 10 years and resides in Williamsburg with her husband, two boys and a stepson. She loves family time with her boys and spending Sundays at the park, zoo, or elsewhere. Diana loves a good Colombian fried empanada and her mother’s gallina criolla, a dish made with chicken, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, corn and a little bit of beer. “I can cook, but it’s not the same,” she said with a laugh. “I need my mom to cook.”
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Juan's Mexican Cafe and Cantina.