With help from talented friends, a restaurateur and his partner create a chic new hangout with a personality all its own

If you haven’t seen or heard of Gaviota yet, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Like everything else about Incline Village’s hidden-in-plain-sight speakeasy, when people eventually stumble upon it, the place feels accidental, if not inevitable. 

Look a little closer, though, and you’ll discover it’s all very much by design. The result: a safe, dark, cozy respite that locals and tourists alike are discovering, and adopting, as their new Tahoe place—comfortable in the irony that it, quite intentionally, isn’t much like anything Tahoe’s ever seen or done at all. 

Discovered Space

After helming Big Water Grille for decades, Incline restaurateur John Cheney was looking for something a little more low-key to juxtapose with his panoramic view-laden upmarket drink and dinner spot near Diamond Peak.

He found it in opening Gus’ Open Pit BBQ in the Raley’s shopping center in 2014.

Gaviota co-owners John Cheney and Jennifer Tiexiera, courtesy photo

Cheney, who was raised in Lompoc in the heart of California’s Central Coast, grew up mastering the art of Santa Maria-style barbecue, cooking over an open flame using the local native red oak as fuel, and garnishing the tri-tip with pinquito beans and garlic bread. Simple as it sounds, it’s a tough meal to replicate—even on its home turf, as red oak continues to disappear—but he felt that Incline and Lake Tahoe had a hankering for something a little different off the grill. And he was right: Gus’ was an instant hit.

But seven years later Cheney decided to sell it to focus his energy solely on Big Water Grille. The new owners ditched the Santa Maria-style concept and turned Gus’ into a spot called Nevada Jane, but that didn’t quite take. Eventually, the building’s owner called up Cheney, who still held the lease in his name, and asked him to step back in. 

Cheney and his partner, Jennifer Tiexiera, who was raised in Incline and now splits time between Tahoe and Los Angeles as a documentary filmmaker, director and producer, brought Gus’ back into the fold in 2023, and for three years they kicked around ideas on what could go in the multi-level restaurant’s underutilized downstairs dining area. 

“It was just wasted space with catering equipment, a couch, a couple leather chairs, and I was walking through there with my dad one day and he said, ‘Why don’t you knock that down and extend the restaurant?’ That’s when the lightbulb went off,” Cheney says.   

“I love the man, but John is a total hoarder,” Tiexiera says with a laugh, adding that the area “was really his, quote, unquote, ‘office,’ which was his hoarding space.” 

You’d never know it now. 

So how did a space filled with piles of junk transform into the funky, jazzy finished product it is today? Turns out, a lot of talent and a lot of help. 

A Key Player in the Making

Several decades ago, Niko DeMaria, then a student at Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, would mount one of his Harleys when the urge hit him and point it north toward the Sierra Nevada.

It was then that he caught his first glimpse of Lake Tahoe. And that, he says, was it.  

Now, he splits time between New York and his adopted home of Incline Village, where he and his wife are gradually stitching themselves into the Tahoe town’s varied fabric. 

Among their friends, Cheney and Tiexiera came to him last year pitching an idea of a found speakeasy in the basement of a barbecue joint.  

The restaurant designer and artist didn’t blink. After all, he’d gotten used to running into creative types with outsized ideas living anonymously among the evergreens and curlicue streets of Incline, where such talents are not unusual. (It is the place where David Coverdale’s wife once opened a pole-dancing studio next to the post office and Gene Simmons decamped from his longtime Beverly Hills home to seek respite from the “earthquakes, fires and pandemics every year.”)

Perhaps more unusual is that DeMaria has discovered a similar cohort of busy artists, chefs, bartenders, builders and designers beneath the pine needle canopy to collaborate with. 

Gaviota is concealed inside Gus’ Open Pit BBQ, photo by Ryan Salm

‘For the Locals’

After deciding to turn the wasted space below Gus’ into a stylish speakeasy, Cheney and Tiexiera went back and forth on a list of things they wanted and hadn’t experienced before in a Tahoe bar—as well as some familiar things that they couldn’t leave out. For Tiexiera, it always came back to the music.  

“I’m a huge jazz fanatic,” she says. “I had a mom who listened to a bunch of jazz and we could see Tony Bennett at Harrah’s in South Lake, or go down there and see The Manhattan Transfer, along with all these obscure musicians.”  

But in Incline specifically, it was mostly about the singer-songwriter, like Luke Stevenson, whose permanent weekend gig at the Lone Eagle Grille went away with the restaurant’s closure in 2025.

A door to Gaviota is partially hidden behind red curtains, photo by Ryan Salm

“We didn’t have anything,” Tiexiera says. “We wanted to have a place for all these different musicians. We wanted a place we could go hide out in. It’s for the locals.” 

Soon, word of the concept spread to their multitalented group of friends, neighbors and acquaintances in Tahoe. Something completely different was brewing right underneath Gus’ second-floor dining room, and folks wanted in. 

“Oh, big time,” Cheney recalls of his inner circle’s enthusiasm for the project—and how the assemblage of a local Avengers-like team of artists, technicians and hospitality veterans came together in the process. “Kevin Holm, he was involved. He did all the lighting and the audio as well. The Tiffany pendant [lights] that are above the bar, those are 100 percent Jen. She would text me an idea. I’d show Pam [Aaron of Sierra Verde Home Design], and she’d give us samples.” 

As the ad hoc group project started to take shape, Cheney reached out for design help from DeMaria, who was just finishing a restaurant redesign project (a Tex-Mex-themed bar on the East Coast called Tejanos) and happened to be looking for his next thing.  

He had but one question: “I just asked John in the very beginning, ‘We’re not going Tahoe, are we?’” He said, ‘No.’”

Along with the answer he wanted to hear, DeMaria says Cheney gave him, along with the others he brought on board, a long creative leash from the get-go. His directive from the start was: “This is more speakeasy, so you can do anything you want. You can walk into a different world.”    

A Cosmic Swirl of Genres

The prospect of doing something unlike anything in Tahoe in Tahoe became sort of a rally cry for the group. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Tahoe aesthetic: “Warm woods, stone, lake views, local art,” DeMaria says.

But, he adds: “It’s been done.”  

The stylish interior of Gaviota, courtesy photo

Cheney and Tiexiera agreed and knew that the found space below Gus’ was begging to try on something new. It doesn’t look out onto anything (unless a Bank of America parking lot counts), and Incline had just lost a couple of its favorite watering holes—Rookies in the same shopping center and The Local across the street. The town was ready for something to come in and bring a good bar energy with some fresh flourishes.

And flourish it did. 

Cheney, Tiexiera, DeMaria and Aaron began exchanging texts filled with ideas. Nothing seemed too out there or too incongruous, and everyone’s voice and influence managed to find its way to the final product. 

“The poster [at the bar] is from the first time I saw The Cure, my favorite band of all time,” Cheney says of the many disparate and funky elements—pop-goth, ’90s boho chic, Amsterdam, jazz, a piano bar and even nautical—coming together to produce a cosmic swirl of genres that somehow combine to make it all work in one space. “Above the piano, the chandelier, Pam and Niko and I were sold on a circular, kind of like a wheel—Jen completely vetoed it.”

The bar’s interior, as DeMaria describes it, is something of “a casbah.” It indeed feels walled off from the rest of the world, highlighted with splashes of dark blues and reds and some of the most forgiving lighting this side of your car’s dashboard at night. There are plenty of dark corners for private conversation, and a piano and room for a DJ in the center for when live entertainment turns it up a notch on weekends.

And all of it, Tiexiera says, is both made for and attributable to “so many incredible artists and insanely talented people that find their way there,” she says of Incline. “I think people go up there for the sacred place of it.” 

‘It’s a Vibe’

The filmmaker gave one recent example of how the Incline—and now Gaviota—orbit seemingly follows her everywhere. 

She’s currently wrapping up directing duties on a feature-length documentary about the life of kickboxer Benny “The Jet” Urquidez, produced by Fisher Stevens and Keanu Reeves, and she was recently trying to track down Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver, who trained with Urquidez after he got sober. Tiexiera reached out to McKagan’s manager to possibly meet up and the manager said he lived in Tahoe, not L.A. She asked him where in Tahoe and he said Incline Village. She revealed she was raised in Incline and owns Gaviota. 

The cocktail bar features various seating options throughout, photo by Ryan Salm

“He says, ‘My wife and I go there all the time. She’s singing there this weekend,” says Tiexiera, pausing for a moment before pivoting to what Incline’s reputation has become—and who really is there making the town go. “We get distracted that it’s a billionaire playground. We forget there are a lot of people who are artists and artisans and make art for a living.” 

But along with honoring Incline’s artsy side, Gaviota doesn’t skimp on a little Nevada-style guilty pleasure, too. Perhaps most surprising in its unobtrusiveness is the bar’s installation of video gambling machines. They’re there for those who want to partake—and perhaps the only signal that you’re in Nevada or Tahoe instead of Tribeca or Silver Lake—but they, too, seem to blend right in with the moody and intoxicating mixtape of styles. 

Maybe it’s the fact that Gaviota achieved something completely different, or maybe it’s the live music, impromptu sing-alongs, or even the buzzy “you never know just who might show up” feel that buoys this newly sought-after destination. Whatever it is, it’s working.  

Bartender Chantel Whitlaw shows a new customer some of her favorite drinks, photo by Ryan Salm

“The speakeasy, it’s nice. I like the vibe over there,” Rachel Specter, general manager of Alibi Ale Works in Incline, says of her favorite after-work spot. “It’s a beautiful space and everyone’s nice. It’s loud and dark in there. It’s a vibe. It’s definitely a needed aspect. … It’s also cozy, and you can get a little gossip, the local tea.” 

Beyond the local tea, Gaviota has also garnered praise for its food, which includes the entire Gus’ menu plus oysters, sushi hand rolls and its signature Sicilian sashimi, as well as its cocktail program, which changes seasonally. During the winter, the menu was movie-themed. Tiexiera says her favorite was “Whose motorcycle is this?” a mezcal-based drink that was “obviously a cute little pull from Pulp Fiction.” 

Indeed, the always-changing, cleverly themed approach to the drinks is part of the fun. That, and they each come with a Nevada-sized kick on top of everything else. One sip and it’ll make you forget that you’re next to The Potlatch gift shop and Pak Mail and reset your biases about anything that could be described as artisanal. Two sips and you’ll blend right into the tactile wallpaper or melt with the oversized cushions. 

A Place for New Memories

In the day-to-day, the bar’s key ingredients—mystery, whimsy, hard work and the magic that comes from being charming—are attributable to the veteran and personality-laden crew, Cheney says.

“My staff, the bartenders, they’re more than bartenders, they’re scientists,” he says. “My bar director, Tess McFarland, ages drinks in oak barrels. She’s in the kitchen making syrups and all these creations that are beyond. … We have about five bartenders that all have different followings, and they bring different things to the table that attract different people. I’m always really impressed.” 

Gaviota bartenders hard at work on a busy Saturday night in Incline Village, photo by Ryan Salm

But even if drinking isn’t your main objective, there is something special for everyone to be found at a space Cheney feels has already taken on a life of its own in just a little more than a year of business. 

And he’s right. The fact that sad recollections of bars lost on the same block are being replaced with new memories made nightly at Gaviota is a testament to the place that seems to be finding its own way, the right way.

“The locals definitely support us,” Cheney says, noting that in April and May, during the height of shoulder season, the bar somehow stayed flush with Incline revelers. “In fact, last night it was quiet. We were in there having fun. There were maybe like eight people. And all of a sudden, these great locals showed up, 15 to 20 people. They were meeting there to celebrate someone’s birthday and brought in a birthday cake. We went from a chill night to a raging night.”  

A chill night to a raging night by the shores of the lake courtesy of a crew of locals trying on something completely different for size. That part of Gaviota’s mission—being the bar that set out to be nothing like Tahoe had ever seen—happily, has failed.

Andrew Pridgen stepped into Gaviota this winter and three sips later had summoned enough liquid courage, once more, to ask Incline Village if it could ever love him back.