If there is one thing the people of Marshfield all seem to love, it’s their chips and queso. So you can imagine that when word got out that Bob Hopkins and his daughter Anna Macias, a 2013 graduate of Marshfield High School, were converting the old Car Works mechanic shop into a Mexican restaurant the whole town was excited.
“When I came here in 1997 from Houston, Texas…it (the building) was a church…I tore the whole roof off and raised the roof to 14 foot ceilings. I redid the house that was in the back and made it into a two story house,” reflected Hopkins on the origin of the building that now houses Las Cazuelas Mexican restaurant. From March 1999 until around May of 2020 the building operated as Car Works mechanic shop.
“When I retired last May, me and Anna was talking and we was like let’s build a Mexican food restaurant… I’ve been a mechanic for years. I wanted to quit turning wrenches and do something different,” shared Hopkins.
The undertaking of the remodel was a project in and of itself. Hopkins and his daughter began the project a year ago. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” laughed Hopkins. “I just thought all we gotta do is clean the floors and paint the walls and do a few little things. And oh I tell ya what…” “I remember he was like ‘oh it shouldn’t be that hard’ and I was like no it’s gonna be hard,” interjected Macias with a laugh.
The remodel called for all hands on deck and the entire family pulled together. “Me, Anna, my wife, Sergio, Gerardo, his wife-just us family. We didn’t really have the money to hire people with the cost of lumber and materials,” reflected Hopkins. The family worked together to clean the entire building from top to bottom, built the bar with reclaimed pallet board and painted each chair by hand. The effort and undertaking of the remodel and subsequent building was more than they bargained for but was worth every bit of the effort.
“The main planning was Anna and I,” shared Hopkins. “We just conjured it up in our head. We would argue a lot, she’d say ‘I’m gonna paint this this color’ and I’d go ‘my gosh Anna it’s gonna look like walking into a crayola box. But then when we got it done I’m like good grief I hate to admit it but she’s right.”
“With all of them (the family) they couldn’t picture it,” explained Macias. “They just don’t have that vision or the foresight. I knew when I was putting this together how I wanted it. I could literally see everything in my head,” added Hopkins. “We wanted to try to have that old Mexico look. I wanted to bring back those years and those days,” Hopkins shared of the vision and how it came together.
The inside build and decoration of the restaurant is really a combination of items that were scavenged, collected, and pillaged. “Mitch Sutton he was over here one day and I asked him to find me some old cedar trees, he went out in the field and cut them down for me,” laughed Hopkins. “The barn tin, I got from my friends and customers-I’ve had since ’97, everybody just pitched in with this and that.”
Even the airplanes that are displayed on both sides of the restaurant near the ceiling and the iconic truck out front were scavenged. “Whenever we first started taking everything out to do the initial cleaning, I was looking for equipment on Facebook. It just so happened Fuddruckers went out of business and the guy was selling ‘anything that we could take apart we could have for a set price’,” explained Macias.
“Those planes was hanging in the ceiling and those are old shriner planes, they used to be in the parades. Most of it’s still there except for the little motor, so they are heavy,” added Hopkins. “I think the guy that we got everything from underestimated our knowledge. We even took paneling off the walls,” laughed Hopkins and Macias at the memory. The tables, chairs and booths all came from there as well.
As for the truck out front, “That was another friend of mine from the auto repair shop, he’s a mechanic. He had that old truck sitting at his house and I asked him, ‘I’d like to have that truck for a display’ and he sold it to me real cheap…there’s a lot of work outside I’m still going to be doing, it just got so hot,” explained Hopkins.
The menu was cultivated by both Anna and her husband Sergio. “He had his ideas of what he wanted to be on the menu. He worked at El Charro before this-he was just a waiter there, but he was familiar with what people in this town liked and loved,” explained Macias. “So we took some of that-put it in our menu. Then some of the new things-like the drink menu, there are some things that Sergio has on there that he loves, like the Sergios Chelada and Cantarita-those are his recipes, his drinks. The street quesadilla, that’s something that he made for customers…so that’s one of the things that’s new.”
The restaurant is completely family owned and operated. “Whenever we first opened my aunt Alma, her niece and nephew came from California to come help us out. My mom and dad were here helping us out. My aunt Margo was here. My aunt from Mexico was here,” reflected Macias. “We had all our family here.”
“Even her ten year old cousin, she can’t speak a word of English, she would bring the chips and salsa to people. She would just start talking to them as if they could speak Spanish and they thought that was so cute and they’d give her a couple dollars. She just thought she was the richest person,” laughed Hopkins at the memory of the opening weekend and how it was literally all hands on deck.
“To convert an auto repair shop…with the response that I’m getting from my old customers and the people that have known me for 23-24 years, they come in and they go ‘good grief Bob how did you do this?!’ It’s a huge compliment, a huge reward for me,” reflected Hopkins.
“The response of the people…that’s been a very rewarding thing for me. Then the customers that come in and they like the food and they compliment that to Anna and (say) ‘your drinks are just fabulous’, it really pumps her up and it pumps me up…,” Hopkins smiled. “It’s rewarding for sure. And I like seeing when people come, they will take pictures or out front they’ll get their big families and take pictures,” added Macias.
“I’m comfortable here. The restaurant is cozy and it’s doing really good,” Macias shared when asked if she had any plans for the future. Hopkins added, “We are just normal simple, common people that don’t expect to ever get rich. We just wanna make a good living and treat people right. I always tell her (gestures to Anna) if you treat people right, they’ll treat you right. If you’re good to people, they’ll be good to you.”
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