What's clearer: the Polivka family bought the place in 1945 to run a dairy farm, and after George Polivka died in 1949, his sons James and Judd eventually convinced their mother that a restaurant would be more profitable than dairy farming. That restaurant, Mesón Sabika, opened in 1990 after a meticulous renovation, with a banquet facility added in 2008; James D. Polivka died in September 2022 at 93. The estate itself shrank from 90-plus acres starting in 1981, and the old barn east of the house — one of the few left in Naperville — is now office space.
Eight air-conditioned dining rooms fill the mansion today, and OpenTable named it to its 2026 Top 100 Romantic Restaurants list, one of only four Illinois entries. The sangria flight and paella inside a historic mansion setting turns a normal dinner into an actual event — this has been a Naperville institution for more than three decades.
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