Built From Scratch
Most people see the finished product when they walk into Jvs Mexican Restaurant and Jvs Pizza & Mexican Restaurant in Atlantic City and Pleasantville, respectively.
They see the colorful murals painted by artists from as far as California. They see handmade furniture shipped from Mexico. They smell slow-cooked quesabirria, watch fresh tortillas being made in front of them, and the homemade mole simmers in the kitchen.
What they don’t see are the years of struggle it took Miguel Vargas and Jasmin Paniagua to get there.
They don’t see the empty building in Pleasantville with no kitchen, zero equipment and a non-existent budget. They don’t see the couple spending every dollar they had on permits, construction materials and a $60,000 kitchen system while filling the dining room with used tables and chairs because it was all they could afford.
And they definitely don’t see the fear that came with opening a restaurant despite having almost no restaurant experience.
“We were very tight with money,” Jasmin said. “Every penny went into the restaurant.”
In 2014, Paniagua worked in a medical office while Vargas worked construction for a company in Linwood. The husband-and-wife team had immigrated to New Jersey years earlier — Jasmin from Peru at age 7 and Miguel from Mexico at age 15 — and built their lives through hard work. But Vargas always dreamed of opening a Mexican restaurant.
That opportunity came in 2014 when they approached Paniagua’s aunt to occupy her empty storefront on Main Street in Pleasantville.
“It was Miguel’s dream to own a Mexican restaurant,” Paniagua said. “But the place was completely empty. No kitchen or anything.”
They spent nearly a full year building it themselves and trying to navigate permits and inspections while balancing work and bills. Vargas’ construction background helped, but financially, it was still a massive risk.
When the restaurant finally opened in January 2015, the challenges were only beginning.
“We never worked in restaurants before,” Paniagua said. “We needed help.”
So, they enlisted Vargas’ mother to fly in from Mexico for several months to help teach recipes and authentic flavors, but it was chaotic.
“The first two months were crazy and bad,” Paniagua admitted. “We were trying to figure out flavors and platter presentations and changing things constantly.”
Somehow, customers stayed patient while the couple learned the business in real time.
For years, they fought to survive. Deliveries were slow at first. Business trickled in. But eventually, word spread. By their third year, the restaurant began gaining momentum, and what was once one of only two Mexican restaurants on the block became part of a booming local food scene now lined with ethnic food and several Mexican restaurants.
After taking a chance on an empty building and a dream, the couple expanded to a second location in Atlantic City in the former Iron Room building on Albany Avenue in 2022.
“It was tough there to start, too,” Paniagua said. “For the first two years, hardly anyone showed up. But then we painted those giant murals on the outside, and people began to notice. They come in and say it looks like a museum. We have come a long way.”
The common denominator between the two places other than the name — Jvs are the initials of their 18-year-old daughter Jasmine — is the amazing food.
Nearly everything at Jvs is made from scratch.
Handmade tortillas and sopes are prepared fresh daily. Salsa is ground by hand on stone. Their popular quesabirria is seasoned heavily and slow-cooked for hours at low temperatures using recipes from Miguel’s mother. Even the Mexican chorizo is made in-house using pork butt, chiles and spices that are ground and prepared from scratch.
“It’s an art form,” Paniagua said of tortilla-making. “I tried to do it a couple times, but when it gets busy, you have to work really fast.”
The two restaurants may share a name, but they each have their own personality.
Pleasantville caters more to daytime crowds, couples and construction workers looking for dishes like chicken with mole or handmade sopes. Atlantic City draws larger groups and families, leading to bigger platters and charcoal-grilled barbecue feasts loaded with steak, pork and that homemade Mexican sausage.
And the Pleasantville location also offers pizza, including traditional Italian style pies as well as specialty Mexican pies with pork, birria, beans, queso and Mexican ingredients.
While Paniagua still works part-time as a registered nurse with AtlantiCare because she enjoys helping people and her husband now owns his own construction company, the restaurants remain the family’s pride and passion.
“Every time we look at both places, we feel so proud,” she said. “They were both so hard and tough to build. But now when we see the art, the food, the walls and how people react to everything, it makes us happy.”
The family continues looking ahead. They recently remodeled the Pleasantville location, and the Atlantic City spot hopes to add a liquor license soon, and they already host live music on special occasions along with karaoke nights on Saturdays.
Jvs participated in the recent Mexican Madness competition at Golden Nugget and walked away with Third Place Judges’ Choice honors.
Not bad for two people who once started with an empty building, used furniture and a dream.
(Jvs Mexican Restaurant is located at 648 N. Albany Ave., Atlantic City, and Jvs Pizza & Mexican Restaurant is located at 10 N. Main St., Pleasantville. Like them on Facebook and call 609-289-8636 in A.C., and 609-677-0001 for Pleasantville.)
Scott Cronick is an award-winning journalist who has written about entertainment, food, news and more in South Jersey for nearly three decades. He hosts a daily radio show – “Off The Press with Scott Cronick” – 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays on Newstalk WOND 1400-AM, 92.3-FM, and WONDRadio.com. He can be reached at scronick@comcast.net.
