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Sacramento restaurateur Ernesto Jimenez was excited, yet afraid to take on the challenge of creating a restaurant in a 6,000-square-foot corner space in the old Arnold Brothers Motor Cars building.

He already was the owner of the colorful Mexican restaurant Ernesto's when he and partners bought the 77-year-old building in 2001. And he'd been dreaming about his next restaurant for years. He wanted it to be something special.

"It was a beautiful old building, so the restaurant had to match the exterior," he said. "I didn't want it to be just another restaurant. It had to be something beyond that."

His visits to the new space at 18th Street and Capitol Avenue told him there was a lot of work ahead. Part of the fun of preparation came on trips to Mexico, his parents' homeland, where he searched for the pieces that could go into the restaurant.

By the time the building's renovation began in the fall of 2003, he'd found Ernesto Cruz, the person who helped him transform a former flooring store into Zócalo, where nearly every furnishing is a handmade piece of art.

"It was a really thrashed, ugly space," Jimenez said. "He pretty much came in and made it happen — and made it look great."

Six years after opening, Jimenez is recruiting Cruz to create a private banquet room that will add 1,000 square feet to the restaurant.

Cruz is an artist with his own shop in San Pedro Tlaquepaque, a Mexican village bordering Guadalajara known for its pottery and blown glass. He was trained as an architect. But his passionate, bohemian nature was best expressed through art, Jimenez said.

"He didn't seem to be the kind of guy who could conform to the 9-to-5 standards we live by," Jimenez said. "So he got into his art."

Cruz first began candlemaking, then got into painting and other art. But it wasn't until he married a very organized European woman that the business end of his art really soared, Jimenez said.

Cruz picked up artistic and cultural influences from other lands as the couple traveled extensively. Travel has become an important part of his imaginative and inventive existence, Jimenez said.

"He needs to do that in order to stay alive — to stay alive creatively," Jimenez said. "I respect that he's true to himself. That's not easy in this world."

Cruz branched into interior design and worked with artisans in his city to get furnishings made by hand out of stone, metal, wood and clay.

But he wasn't easy for Jimenez to find. Jimenez had gotten a tip to check out an unusual lamp in a restaurant in Morelia, Michoacan. He asked the restaurant owner who had made the lamp and where he could find that person. The proprietor sent him to Mexico City without even a name. The artist's work was nowhere to be found.

It wasn't until Jimenez traveled in the opposite direction and stumbled upon Cruz's shop, opened only one week earlier in the state of Jalisco, that he found the lamp's maker.

Jimenez had searched Mexico extensively, trying to find the look he wanted for the restaurant. He found beautiful art, but thought it had been done in too many other Mexican restaurants in both countries. He quickly fell in love with what he found in Cruz's shop, "io," named for the couple's son. But Jimenez didn't know if others would feel the same. He wasn't sure if anyone else would even like it.

"It was risky. I didn't know if people were going to say, 'This isn't Mexican,' " he said. "'Cause this isn't seen so much — in Mexico, even."

Cruz spent five days in Sacramento taking photos and measuring the space.

Jimenez visited Cruz 10 times in a year and a half to go over the interior design plans and look at artwork. Many design adjustments had to be made to fit the space and adhere to city codes for historic buildings, Jimenez said.

For example, a design for a front door awning couldn't be used because it didn't meet city code.

The two spent hours visiting shops where people were crafting pieces for the restaurant. Jimenez got to know Cruz and his family over dinners at their house.

Cruz developed a style for Zócalo that blends influences from pre-Columbian Mexico, Moorish Iberia, Spain, Morocco, Egypt and Africa. Abstract human figures and hearts can be found again and again on pieces throughout the restaurant.

"It's a little difficult to describe," Jimenez said.

Cruz designed things such as a pre-Columbian baptismal urn, called a pila; a grand volcanic stone fireplace and a huge, ornate wooden door frame for a 500-foot banquet space known as the Morelia Room; hand-blown lamps of fantastic shapes and sizes; handworked metal bar stools; and a bar and tables made of travertine. Cruz also designed wooden furniture and painted a large painting on a back wall.

Jimenez will return to Tlaquepaque in April to look at Cruz's plans for the new room, talk about specific ideas and choose art and furnishings. The existing banquet space can get noisy, partly because it is open to the entire restaurant. The idea is to create a quieter space for celebrations and meetings in a room between Zócalo and the former Dragonfly restaurant, Jimenez said.

The look will be a continuation of the main restaurant, with a more rustic style to block noise. The floor will be wood covered with big, Persian-style rugs. Heavy drapes will hang on an exterior wall containing a separate door and windows to muffle sound and create a darker space when needed for such things as audio-visual presentations.

"We're going to make it as multifunctional as we can," Jimenez said.

An opening between the space and the main dining room will be built in the restaurant's back wall, where Cruz's painting now hangs. A heavy wooden door will be installed there. A pre-Columbian statue lit like a shrine will be visible through that doorway. A small service bar and restrooms also may be added, Jimenez said.

Work on the new room is expected to start by June. At the same time, the outdoor patio will be expanded in front of the room and more plants will be added outside. The additions are meant to expand on the restaurant's goal of being a gathering place. After all, it's named after Mexico City's famous plaza, known as the Zócalo — one of the world's largest public squares.

Jimenez said he's happy to have found Cruz, who created the unique restaurant Jimenez had been dreaming of.

"There's lots of great art all over Mexico," Jimenez said. "But nothing like this."

Photos by Ernesto Jimenez and Suzanne Hurt. Restaurant scene photo provided by Jimenez.