With Christmas carols long gone and the cheers of New Year's Eve surviving as hazy moments in some people's memories, a new sound is taking over the streets of downtown Santa Fe. Long slurps of homemade soup deliver a wholesome aural experience for those who can trace this noise back to its source.

Just west of the state Capitol on Galisteo Street shines an American symbol of freedom — a refurbished 1967 Airstream trailer. In this case, it is Slurp, a symbol of culinary freedom and soup sovereignty, the first one of its kind (licensed kind, anyway) in Santa Fe. "You can't get more nutrition than in a homemade soup," head Chef Jean-Luc Salles said about his soups, which have been ladled out at Slurp since November.

Salles and partners Frances Salles, Carlos Briceno and Rebecca Chastenet bring diverse backgrounds and experiences to their Slurp venture, which originated when Briceno resurrected the Airstream after purchasing it from a seller in Cañoncito. Briceno and his enterprising friends knew they wanted to open an eatery, and the Airstream provided a blank canvas. "It wasn't going to be a restaurant, it was going to be something fun that we could play with," Briceno said of the concept.

Chef Salles hails from Bordeaux, France, and brings classical culinary training as well as 30 years in the restaurant business to this comfy camper. Briceno, from Caracas, Venezuela, made his way into the culinary business after stints in graphic design, home building and reconstruction. Chastenet got involved after writing as a food critic and co-author of four cookbooks.

Their mission: simple, fast and wholesome food at an affordable price.

Under a huge, rusted-looking spoon bolted to the top of the trailer like an antenna, their mission begins each morning when Briceno arrives at 5:30 a.m. and starts baking fresh focaccia bread in a small convection oven.

Slurp offers simple breakfasts such as warm croissants with ham and a Tortilla Española — a rib-sticking combination of potatoes, onions and locally sourced eggs. The trio have been working with the Santa Fe Alliance to create a menu that is as locally sourced as possible.

Chef Salles then arrives at 7:30 a.m. to prepare the soups of the day. Slurp offers three soups a day, averaging about 15 different soups per week. Each weekday, Salles prepares 12 gallons of soup in the small trailer heated by bubbling broths. Soup aficionados can look for a daily trio of soups: a vegetarian option, such as their lentil/spinach soup, a hormone- and antibiotic-free meat offering, such as their wild-boar posole, and a cream soup, such as their celery/bleu cheese soup. Each slurp-able item comes in an Earth-friendly bowl ranging from 12 to 32 ounces. One component they are working on is finding an organic spoon that won't disintegrate in the steamy soups.

"When they have their first cup of our soup, they become attached," Chef Salles said of his customers.

Although Salles says some of his soups aren't at the level he would like them to be (chefs tend to be perfectionists), Slurp's business is meeting and surpassing his expectations. Success came without any advertising besides Facebook and Twitter pages, which update the soups that will be offered each day. The reputation of their soups has spread by word — or slurp — of mouth alone.

"A lot of the same people actually come every day," Briceno said. "Others that come may be tourists, or just a friend of a friend who heard about us." Recently, two of the daily soups have run out before closing time. Salles says Slurp will stock up more in the coming weeks because of the legislative session, which begins Jan. 18.

After being denied a parking space at various locations, Slurp finally found its niche and has been anchored at the same location for a few months. If things continue to go well for the cooks as they squeeze by each other in their 8-foot-by-27-foot kitchen, they plan to open a second mobile kitchen with a different concept.

As for Slurp, it's now venturing into other dishes besides soup. It offers a pulled-pork sandwich and will soon have a mac-and-cheese dish. As Salles describes it, Slurp is a chameleon-type of eatery. He says he and his partners in chrome will have to adapt when summer comes around and offer more seasonal dishes.

This Airstream eatery isn't a new concept to cities like Austin, Texas; Los Angeles; New York; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle, where these shiny silver bullets can be spotted everywhere filling stomachs with healthier, more affordable, oftentimes quicker meal options. But "for the people of Santa Fe to have something different," Briceno said, "it gives more ambience, a more out-of-the-box mentality, and that is needed." He hopes more unique food dispensaries start popping up around town.