Feliz Zaborsky had worked in Tucson restaurants for years when she and her sister decided to do something different.
"We thought we'd do salsas and sell them at farmers markets," she said of how their boutique Queen Ceviche salsa and ceviche business came to be. "But we wanted to do something different."
So the salsa business morphed into ceviche, the Latin-inspired seafood dish where fresh fish is cured in citrus juices.
From a friend's commercial kitchen, the sisters whip up fresh shrimp ceviche, spicy salsa and their popular Cousin Tony's Avacado Salsa. They also started making iced lemonade and limeade infused with hibiscus and a seasonal hibiscus and sweet meyer cranberry lemonade.
Several times a week, they set up a stand at area farmers markets between Sierra Vista and Tucson, including Heirloom Farmers Market at Rillito Park and the Rincon Valley Farmers & Artisans Market on Old Spanish Trail, to sell directly to the public. They also are expanding into Showlow markets, and are regulars to area festivals including last month's Willcox Wine Country Festival and wine events in Sonoita.
The sisters, whose family has a long history of owning restaurants in Tucson and their father's native Chicago, use local and organic products; the hibiscus syrup is from flowers they source from the Co-Op while the chipotle flakes they use in their chipotle salsa comes from Native Seed Search.
The hibiscus drinks became so popular that the sisters are now bottling and selling the syrup.
At Saturday's "Tucson 23" festival, the sisters are casting the hibiscus in a starring role of a specialty margarita.
