Jon Barvels, left, and Joel Cordes, co-owners of El Sancho, stand together and toast to their newly renovated El Sancho on Bend’s east side on June 4. (Andy Tullis/The Bulletin)

When flames devastated El Sancho Taco Shop East on June 20, making it impossible to continue service for the foreseeable future, co-owner Joel Cordes looked at the charred walls and melted electrical sockets and was oddly unfazed.

“Running a restaurant is really like overcoming a series of small disasters all the time, so when the big ones come, they don’t feel that bad,” he said.

Last week, less than a year after the accidental disaster believed to have been caused by ash from the outdoor wood-fired ovens, Bend’s beloved taco shop reopened to the public, awash in fresh paint in its signature bold colors.

The damage didn’t worry Cordes because, after all, he had his business partners of 12 years, Jon Barvels and Barvels’ wife Beth, by his side.

“While I may have started the El Sancho food cart, they are the real force behind what El Sancho is today,” Cordes said of the Barvels, in an email to The Bulletin. “They have carried us through so many hurdles over the years and are just such great people.”

Cordes admires Jon’s business acumen and Beth’s creativity and care for the staff, he said.

Restoring the taco shop

In the three days following the fire, Jon Barvels felt a full spectrum of emotions, he said. He wondered how the business could financially survive with one of its locations closing during peak tourist season, a period when many Bend area restaurant owners earn a large portion of their profits.

“Once we realized that insurance would kind of rebuild the building, pay us and employees lost income from the restaurant being closed. It was like a huge weight lifted off us. It’s like all right, let’s keep going forward,” he said.

As luck would have it, the owners had signed a lease at a new commissary kitchen the week before the fire ripped through the restaurant. They juggled cooking and staff among their westside taco shop on Galveston Avenue and taco shack at Crux Fermentation Project while Jon stayed on top of correspondence with insurance, the builder and contractors.

Beth oversaw the redesign of the restaurant, selecting new colors and decor. The interior is now outfitted with burnt orange booths and loud wallpaper in the dining room tucked in the back corner. The wallpaper of one bathroom displays UFOs, the other a giant robot.

Bend artist Megan Stumpfig was commissioned to paint a new mural that covers the better part of the side of the restaurant that faces Third Street. Another vibrant mural by Seattle artist  Shogo Ota in the interior features the taco shop’s logo atop a phoenix, a symbolic nod to all that the business owners have overcome over the past year.

More coverage: Bend’s El Sancho Taco Shop will rise from the ashes of fire

Silver linings

The owners of El Sancho are relentlessly capable of finding the silver lining.

Jon Barvels noted that before the fire, remodeling the restaurant interior was on the to-do list.

“It was getting a little dated and needed some electrical improvements. The floors were kind of rough and it just needed some improvements, a little love. It obviously forced our hand. I feel like now the inside matches how sweet the outside looks,” he said.

For some customers, a year without the taco shop on the city’s east side feels long, but for Barvels and Cordes, it feels like just yesterday they were operating out of the restaurant before the destruction.

New industrial gas cookers have been installed in the kitchen, replacing the former primitive wood-fired ovens to prevent a similar incident.

But if you don’t look too closely, the restaurant’s outdoor seating area feels exactly as it did before.

“It feels very ‘Twilight Zone,’” Barvels said. “We’re so happy to have people back in here and to see it alive again is really really special. We appreciate all the support and all the love. The community has really shown up over the last year and we appreciate that.”

A grand reopening party will be held at the eastside taco shop with live music performances, raffles and a chance to win free tacos for a year from 4-9 p.m. on June 29.