Saul Escobedo and Sergio Arzola with their M’Xuma Tacos food truck. They will launch M’Xuma Mexican Grill at Crescent B Commons later this year. COURTESY PHOTO
When M’Xuma Mexican Grill opens at Crescent B Commons later this year, it will be a dream come true for not one but two Babco*ck Ranch families. Partners in business and in friendship, Araceli and Saul Escobedo, together with Bibiana and Sergio Arzola, have pooled their resources and talents to bring regional Mexican flavors and lots of fun to the community they enthusiastically call home.
Araceli, who was born in Mexico and came to the United States when she was nine months old, remembers when she first met Bibiana. Their boys were taking swimming lessons together. “I heard her speaking Spanish to her son. ‘Are you Mexican?’ I asked, and she told me she was Colombian, but her husband was Mexican.” The women struck a conversation and found many commonalities. “When our husbands met, they became best friends instantly,” she says. Saul and Sergio both went to school in Mexico.
Several months later, the two couples vacationed in Cancun with their kids. The Escobedos have four boys and one girl, aged 8 to 25, while the Arzolas have a son and a daughter. As the families explored area restaurants and enjoyed the unique flavors of the country, Sergio, a pilot for Allegiant Air, told Saul that he wanted to invest in a new restaurant and was looking for someone to help or mentor him.
The Escobedos and Arzolas families vacationing together in Cancun, Mexico. The trip inspired the families to open M’Xuma Mexican Grill. COURTESY PHOTO
“My husband said, ‘That’s something we’ve been wanting to do also. Let’s talk to our wives and let’s do it together,’” Araceli recalls, noting that she and her husband had once owned a food truck when they were very young. “We moved to Florida to raise our kids and then got into construction—Saul owns RCH Enterprises, which does contract work for Lennar—but it was always a dream of ours to one day either have another food truck or open a restaurant. We just wanted to wait for our kids to be a little older because a restaurant takes a lot of your time,” Araceli says.
Opening a restaurant in Babco*ck Ranch is an exciting proposition for these eager entrepreneurs. “We moved here because it was new—the community of the future,” Araceli explains. “We like getting in at the beginning of stuff, to be trailblazers, so having the restaurant right here is exciting.”
While the husbands will keep their day jobs, the wives will take care of day-to-day operations. All four of them are excellent cooks, Araceli says, but they are currently interviewing qualified chefs to helm the kitchen. The idea is to create a restaurant that is so good it will inspire diners from near and far, attracting not just Babco*ck Ranch residents, but people from neighboring towns like Lehigh Acres, Fort Myers and Cape Coral, and filling all 150 or so seats of both indoor and outdoor space for lunch and dinner.
Named after a historical Mexican figure, M’Xuma will feature regional, traditional cuisine from different areas in Mexico. “We want it to be very authentic so people can learn about the different culinary treats of our tierra, our country,” Araceli explains. “Just like you have southern cooking here, there’s different styles of cooking, depending on the part of Mexico that you’re in. We’re from Northern Mexico— Durango, Chihuahua—over there, it’s like we’re the Mexican cowboys. We’re into meat and potatoes, flour tortillas. Whereas in the coastal areas, Cancun and Mazatlan, or Tijuana or Baja, California, that’s more about the seafood. And we also want to include vegan choices—we don’t want to forget our vegan and vegetarian friends.”
With a full liquor bar, they plan to explore flavored margaritas and other drinks that are popular in Mexico and less well known here, including mezcal, a strong agave-based liquor that has a smokier, richer and sweeter taste than tequila.
In anticipation of the restaurant’s grand opening, the couples have brought their food truck called M’Xuma Tacos to various events around town, including Founder’s Square on Fridays and Saturday nights and during the Farmer’s Market on Sunday afternoons. Offering tacos, quesadillas, and aguas frescas—the delicious thirst-quenchers made of fruits and vegetables—the husbands will do all the cooking, while Araceli and Bibiana take orders. Once the restaurant opens, the food truck, which was custom-designed and manufactured in Mexico, will be available for parties and other catering opportunities.
Living and working in Babco*ck Ranch is definitely a dream come true for Araceli. “We don’t just like living here, we love it,” she says. “It’s such a family-oriented community, with lots of activities for our children. There’s teen night for my 14-year-old, swimming for the little kids, the park, Food Trucks. We’ve made a lot of good friends. I get along with all the moms on my street, and we look out for each other’s kids. It takes a village. There’s such a sense of community, and in that way it reminds me of Mexico.
