Peek inside soon-to-open downtown Mexican restaurant
June 27, 2024
An “elevated” Mexican restaurant from the owners of Salas Salsas is getting ready to open next month.
The final touches are being put on BibiSol, which is in the former Mrs. Murphy’s Irish Gifts space at 219 S. Phillips Ave in the Carpenter Building.
Subscribers to BibiSol’s newsletter will learn first of the restaurant’s soft-opening dates, which likely will include reservations to provide the best experience for diners and staff.
Photos by 4Front Studios
A tentative grand-opening date is July 19.
Marcella Salas and her mother, Patricia Burbine, started Salas Salsas in 2020, selling salsa at the Brandon Farmers Market, expanding into online and retail sales in local grocery stores and a food truck. They are joined in the restaurant venture by Salas’ fiance, Chris Nelson.
“We’re so excited to open up soon and offer just a little bit different than what Salas Salsas has been doing,” Salas said.
She describes it as an “elevated dining experience, elevated Mexican.”
“More important for this is everything fresh, everything,” Burbine said. “Not to have to use canned, no preservatives, everything fresh made in the moment, and this is most important for me.”
BibiSol will be a full-service restaurant. “That way, our staff can communicate what makes us different than the Mexican food that already exists out there, explain more about what the nixtamal practice is, talk about the vendors that we’re partnering with to provide local produce, local meat and everything,” Salas said.
Nixtamal is “the ancient indigenous practice where we take the field corn, put it an alkaline solution and then we grind it with volcanic stones, so then, we get the product that is non-GMO, completely gluten-free, very aromatic, fresh flavor, fresh texture and what a true tortilla should taste like,” Salas said. “Nobody currently in the Midwest – if you don’t count Minneapolis – is doing that process.”
It’s a process that Burbine is familiar with. She remembers growing up in Mexico and visiting her grandmother, who would get up at 3 a.m. to make food for the day, including fresh tortillas using a metate, a stone table to grind the corn.
BibiSol’s menu will feature tamales and other nixtamal-based offerings like sopes and tortillas for specialty tacos. Meats and vegetables will be prepared as guisados — simmered in salsas.
The restaurant will serve beer, micheladas, wine, wine-based cocktails and agua frescas.
While Salas Salsas products will continue to be available at the Brandon and Falls Park farmers markets and in grocery stores, customers can find them at the restaurant too.
“We still want to remain accessible to our customers, and so we will have our bodega,” Salas said. “That’s going to have all of Salas Salsas products, our tamales, all of our salsas and other grab-and-go goodies for people that are on the move, just want to come in and get a little bit of what we have to offer, maybe don’t have the time or the budget to enjoy the full dining experience.”
The restaurant will have seating for about 30 diners at tables, banquettes and the bar. There will be patio seating along Phillips Avenue in nicer weather, and a couple of tables will be set up in the lobby of the building, which also includes EightyOne Arcade Bar, other businesses and apartments.
The decor of the restaurant space includes several plants, Mexican clay bricks, wicker-backed chairs, natural fiber lighting fixtures and a large mural with cornstalks and flowers by Alexa Liedtke of Lexa Quinn Illustration.
Hours will be 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday with a brunch menu.
