Upon entering the   north-bound I-229 on-ramp from Cliff Ave near LHS, one may see a billboard that reads “Enter as friends, leave as family,” which advertises the Sioux Falls Italian cuisine franchise owned by Riccardo and Marybeth Tarabelsi. This saying perfectly summarizes what the two owners aim to achieve with their five companies: offering hospitality and kindness.
The Tarabelsis opened the beloved Sioux Falls restaurant, R Wine Bar & Kitchen, in 2018. Since then, they have steadily expanded their influence in the local restaurant industry with four other sister companies. These include Vespa Catering (opened in 2021), Maribella Ristorante (opened in 2022), Brix Wine Bar (opened in 2022) and their most recent expansion, Trio Jazz Club (opened in 2024). Maribella and its two neighboring restaurants, Brix and Trio Jazz, have become Sioux Falls’ main sources of “authentic” Italian dining experiences—no restaurant in the city rivals their dedication to providing a menu faithful to Northern Italy. Riccardo, born in Florence, Italy, has placed heavy importance on the region of Italian cooking in which they specialize. Very notably, none of their restaurants offered the famous Italian dessert, known as a cannoli until Trio Jazz’s menu adopted it, because it is a dessert specific to Southern Italy. In this way, dining at each location is a learning experience of Riccardo’s heritage.
“We try to educate as many people as possible in a very nice way,” said Riccardo. “There’s lots of regional differences in Italian cooking.”

The Tarabelsis’ dedication to mastering every detail of their craft has captured the attention of downtown goers throughout the years since R Wine Bar’s opening. From accommodating food allergies to their reception to feedback, the business is always evolving to fit the customer’s needs.
“We don’t wait until we hear negative feedback to make a change,” said Riccardo. “We try to be proactive and not reactive. We are our own biggest competition. We’re always innovating and challenging ourselves because we always want to be the leader.”

Most importantly, Maribella creates a welcoming environment that sticks to the Tarabelsis’ core values. Riccardo and Marybeth strive to make everyone feel like family, from customers to booked jazz musicians and especially their employees. Each employee is valued at a high level no matter their position.
“Everybody matters,” said Marybeth. “We don’t have a restaurant without our dishwashers. So, everybody gets the same respect and everybody respects everybody at the same level.”
“We’re gonna treat everyone […] as if they’re irreplaceable,” said Riccardo. “Their position is gonna be replaceable, but people aren’t replaceable.”
Beyond fostering a community through food, a community centered around music has emerged through Trio Jazz and R Wine Bar. Since its opening, R Wine Bar has consistently hosted Jazz nights every Thursday. Through the 2020 pandemic and live-streamed jazz nights, R Wine Bar has earned a reputation for its loyalty to the Sioux Falls music community. Trio Jazz’s opening in July 2024 has brought a more consistent and focused home for local jazz musicians to play.
“We knew there was a jazz community that existed in Sioux Falls, but the musicians didn’t have a home,” said Riccardo. “We really wanted to be consistent about it and be loyal to these musicians.”
The most telling representation of the restaurant’s approach to hospitality is the Tarabelsis’ philosophy on staying composed in stressful environments—being a duck. On busy nights when the kitchen staff, servers and bartenders are all busy, Riccardo and Marybeth maintain that their staff must stay outwardly composed despite the inner stress that may be present.
“Being a duck is how you comport yourself,” said Riccardo. “We’ve all seen a duck swim across the pond just kind of gliding but what we don’t see is under the water, their little feet are going a million miles an hour, getting them across the pond. What happens, especially in the restaurant business […] everyone’s stressed, but on the surface, we are calm, cool, collected, happy to see you with a smile on our face. Even though internally we can be going a million miles an hour stressing but we don’t want to show it.”
Maribella and its sister companies remain a family-run business despite their large scale. Manager of Brix Wine Bar, Hank Freese, nephew to Riccardo and Marybeth, has been close with his family his whole life, both physically and relationally, having grown up in the same neighborhood as his aunt, uncle and cousins Berent, Dante and Jaxon Tarabelsi. Freese and his cousins, who work together, work efficiently under an often overwhelming environment because of their bond as a family. The Tarabelsis, by employing family members, maintain a high level of trust and communication among their staff.
“We all grew up within two blocks of each other our whole formative child lives,” said Freese. “That really primed us all for the stress of working in the restaurant industry.”
From a dream to open a wine bar, to now a five-company operation, the Tarabelsis have captivated the downtown restaurant industry. When one steps into the doors of any of their locations, the intention is to feel like stepping into a relative’s house.
“When we first opened, our goal was never to open five businesses in the next five years,” said Riccardo. “The goal was [to] create a culture that matched our core values as a family [and] create a business that created a following.”
“It feels like I’m welcoming you into my home and I get to host you in my home,” said Dante.