La Cabaña: 10 Years After the Fire

For Mount Vernon’s La Cabaña Mexican Restaurant, 2026 marks a decade after the business recovered and reopened from a devastating fire.

Jesse Diaz, La Cabaña’s current general manager, has lived in Georgia for 31 years, with much of that time spent working in the restaurant industry. She got her start in 1995 cleaning tables and dealing with a language barrier, as English is not her first language.

“When I came here in 1995, I started to work here with not much English, and I used to have to clean tables,” said Diaz. “That was my job: clean tables.”

Diaz began learning English, not through academic study but by ear, and began working her way up through the restaurant industry in Augusta. Eventually, in 2013, she came to Mount Vernon to open a new location for La Cabaña Mexican Restaurant, a Georgia chain of Mexico-inspired dine-in restaurants.

Diaz serves as the restaurant’s general manager, meaning she is responsible for all of the day-to-day operations of the business. This means she may serve as a cook, a waiter or any other role the restaurant needs at a given time.

“My job is to make sure everything is good…, you know, dining room, the kitchen and everything,” said Diaz.

However, on April 1, 2015 – on Diaz’s birthday – a storm caused faulty lining to catch fire, destroying the restaurant’s kitchen. Issues with the insurance company left the restaurant closed for 16 months and Diaz, single mother of four children, without a job.

“I’m a single mom of four kids, and when that happened, my twins were two years old, and I [didn’t] have a job and I have four kids,” said Diaz. “So, for that 16 months, [it] was kind of a nightmare for me, you know, because I was surviving.”

When La Cabaña reopened in 2016, Diaz felt she and the business were coming back stronger. Not much had changed since the fire, but instead she felt a renewed sense of vigor following her return.

“When you come back, you come back with everything,” said Diaz. “You try to make sure everything works right.”

According to Diaz, she loves her work at La Cabaña and the restaurant industry, and the satisfaction of her customers is a source of motivation for her.

“For me, it’s kind of, how you say, gasoline, when people go there and tell me they like it, they feel satisfied,” said Diaz.

Since that reopening, the business has remained relatively consistent in its offerings of the La Cabaña franchise’s menu. However, Diaz had had the opportunity to make her own additions to the menu, allowing her to utilize her passion for cooking.

La Cabaña has remained open for 10 years as one of Mount Vernon’s most prominent businesses. According to Diaz, the restaurant attracts not just regular customers, but also clientele from many of the neighboring communities, such as Dublin and Soperton.

“That makes me feel good,” said Diaz. “It’s really a small town, and then they had a choice to pick out another place, but I really appreciate that.”