He’s become king of the wedding taco bar. But soon, this chef will serve the public again
Only those who have attended weddings in recent years have been able to eat food prepared by chef Jason Febres — once one of Wichita’s most recognizable chefs and a regular on nationally televised cooking competitions.
But that soon will change. Febres, who was the chef at Sabor Latin Bar & Grill when it first opened in 2007 then went on to co-own his own restaurant — Taste & See Global Cuisine at 255 N. Washington — from 2013 to 2016, has for the last four years been running his own catering business called Rent the Chef.
Though he opened the business hoping to focus on high-end private dinners, Febres has become known for the elaborate taco bars he’s frequently hired to serve at area weddings. The taco bars — which he prepares from a big building at 117 S. Park Ave. in Valley Center that he acquired in 2022 — are 99% of his business now, he said. He gets booked for 30-40 weddings every month.
But he wants to do more than just taco bars, he said.
“We are also getting a ton of requests from people who can’t have access to that on the regular or who keep asking, ‘Are you open to the public?’” he said.
So Febres has come up with a plan to start serving the public again. His Valley Center headquarters is enormous — it has 14,000 square feet — and he’s built inside of it his dream kitchen, which has plenty of space for people to sit and dine. He’s ordered two 10-foot community tables for diners to utilize and hopes they’ll be ready soon.
After that, he said, he’ll start offering regular “Chef’s Table” dinners at Rent the Chef. They’ll likely be open to only 20-24 diners at a time and happen once a quarter or once a month, he said. He hopes to offer the first one in September or October.
“A lot of people used to really enjoy those Chef’s Tables at Taste & See,” Febres said. “We get that so often that it’s time for us to offer that again.”
The dinners will be designed for people who want to try something different — especially proteins they’ve never had before, said Febres, who back in 2012 faced major backlash when he announced plans to serve farm-raised lion meat at an exotic dinner he was putting on. After complaints flooded in, he removed lion from the menu.
But Febres said he’s still fascinated with unusual proteins and has found a supplier he can source them from. The open-to-the-public dinners he’ll offer will include exotic meats such as bear, zebra, water buffalo, turtle and deer tongue.
He plans to stay away from lion, though.
“The lion was a sensitive subject,” he said. “But as long as the foods are USDA approved, as long as they’re found here in the states. . .
“This is stuff that, when people travel, they come back to Wichita saying, ‘I had this’ or ‘I had this.’ Why not offer that here in our back yard?”
Febres said he plans to collaborate with other local chefs for the dinners, which he hopes can be “highly interactive and borderline out-of-the-box.” For example, he said, he envisions roasting a whole pig and letting people pick their own meat directly from it.
He’ll also team up with a local bartending service, which will offer adult beverages at the dinners.
Besides the Chef’s Table dinners, Febres said, he hopes to soon start opening his building up for Taco Tuesdays and serve his famous wedding taco bar to members of the public. He’s tentatively planning the first one for 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 1.
“We’ll start with once a month, and if it goes amazing — which I’m sure it will — we’ll probably go bi-weekly or weekly,” he said.
Febres said he knows that some people might still not appreciate his desire to serve unusual proteins, but he can’t please everyone, he said.
“Some people will be like, ‘No way, Jose,’” he said. “But we’ll also get the foodies going, ‘Heck, yeah.’ This is for the people who like to experience different things.”
Febres, a native of Venezuela, has been cooking in Wichita since the mid-2000s. He started off working in restaurants like Bella Luna Cafe and Uptown Bistro before being hired to open Melad Stephan’s Sabor in 2007. He’s also appeared on many nationally televised cooking shows, including “Cutthroat Kitchen” and “Bar Rescue.”
His Rent the Chef business has grown to employ 25 people, including his mother, Maria Urosa; his father, Hernan Febres; and his sister, Melany Febres.
I’ll let you know when Febres settles on dates for his first open-to-the-public events.
This story was originally published August 20, 2024 at 12:15 PM.
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