An Album of Eats for Your Eyes…
Santa Fe food is one of the reasons we (and many others) visit Santa Fe, New Mexico. And for some visitors, food is the main attraction.
Why? Because New Mexico has a distinctive cuisine, encouraged by ideal conditions for growing a variety of chile peppers. Because Santa Fe attracts many visitors who have the means and inclination to dine out. And because, with more than 200 restaurants, Santa Fe offers many styles of food at every price point.
Today’s blog is a photo album with samples of the Santa Fe food on offer. Because if you visit Santa Fe for Art, per last week’s blog, you’ll need nutrients to sustain you! And along the way I’ll offer a few comments on the restaurants and diners that offer these goodies.
About That Chile…
First, a word about the chile pepper, generally called chile in New Mexico and in Latin American countries.
In New Mexico, the best-known chiles are grown by farmers near the town of Hatch. Although the U.S. is not a top five country for growing chile peppers, Hatch styles itself the “Chile Capital of the World“. Hatch has an elevation of 4,000 feet with hot days and chilly nights (no pun here!), favorable conditions for growing chile.
Texas Times
I grew up in central Texas, where I was exposed to chile the pepper, and also chili the stew. The latter of course consists of chiles, meat, tomatoes and often, beans. So I acquired an appetite for spice.
After college, I lived far from Texas and gradually lost my tolerance for highly spiced food. I’m still fond of the chile flavor, but now I tone down its spice with additives such as avocado, sour cream and accompaniments. Nola’s taste is selective, really liking some chile dishes but not wanting much spice. Fortunately, our Michigan-adapted recipes seem to suit both our tastes and those of nearby family members.
Chile in Santa Fe Food
Given this history, you’ll appreciate that we proceed carefully when dining in Santa Fe. We have learned that although the menu description of a dish may not include the word chile, Santa Fe chefs freely add chile whenever they feel like it. And it is hopeless to ask the server how spicy a dish is, because unlike a Scoville score or chromatography measurement, a person’s hotness scale is quite individual.
We encountered one dramatic chile surprise this year. Nola ordered yellowfin tuna tartare at a local restaurant that serves many tourists. The item was so spicy that Nola could not eat a bite and had to send it back.
However, that was an exception. Santa Fe welcomes a wide variety of visitors, and most restaurants avoid surprising the patrons.
New Mexican Dishes
Catering to popular demand, almost every restaurant includes some New Mexican specialties.
When a stereotyped tourist sits down in a restaurant, the first thing they want is a margarita, and right after that comes chips and something in which to dip them. There are salsas galore of course, with all stages of spiciness. However, the best crowd-pleaser is guacamole, freshly made tableside. And one always wonders, where does the restaurant get those perfect ripe avocados? This guacamole is being mixed to our taste by a server at Pink Adobe restaurant.
Here’s the closest thing to a classic New Mexican dish that I know of: the Number Four plate at The Shed restaurant, in downtown Santa Fe. They use flat tortillas made from blue corn, layered with cheddar cheese and onion, then smothered with a thick carpet of tasty red chile. The lettuce and tomato topping can be enlarged to cover the plate, or amplified with a fried egg, pozole or beans. The sauce is so tasty that it would be a sin to leave any behind, so the restaurant provides garlic bread with which to scrape up the remainder.
Weldon’s, the indoor/outdoor restaurant on Museum Hill, offers this attractive plate of another standard: Enchiladas Suizas (rolled chicken enchiladas with cheese, tomatillo sauce and the trimmings).
At Pink Adobe, this pork soup with green chile and “fired” tomatoes made a perfect light dinner for me.
Among the Tomasita restaurant’s “classics” are these deep-fried rolled flautas filled with chicken, cheese and green chile, joined by multiple accompaniments and a sopapilla.
…And a New Mexican Dessert
Speaking of which: Sopapillas are a type of puffy fried bread offered by many restaurants in New Mexico as well as Texas and Arizona. The bread itself contains no chile, but is a good accompaniment to spicy dishes. Sopapillas may be served several different ways:
- As a bread, to mop up spicy sauces.
- As a main course stuffed with savory beef or chicken fillings.
- And frequently as a dessert, adorned with honey or a honey-butter blend.
The photo shows a sopapilla at Tomasita’s restaurant: it’s as large as your hand!
Not wanting to wear you out with photos, here are a few more noteworthy dishes we enjoyed:
- Pink Adobe’s Steak Dunigan: a large block of New York strip steak topped with green chile and mushrooms, served with spinach amandine and a roasted potato.
- Pasqual Cafe‘s flat chicken enchiladas covered with a traditional mole sauce of roasted chiles and bitter chocolate, topped with sesame seeds and accompanied by rice and corn bread.
- La Plazuela‘s chile rellenos (whole Hatch chiles stuffed with Mexican cheeses, battered and lightly fried) with red and green chile sauces, served with pork pozole and beans.
Non-New-Mexican Dishes
It may surprise you but yes, many visitors to Santa Fe want non-New Mexican food for some or even all of their meals. And local chefs are happy to display their culinary sophistication and broad-mindedness by offering them.
Hervé Wine Bar is one of the restaurants offering very attractive fried calamari.
La Fonda’s French Pastry Shop cooks crepes to order, in this case wrapped around chorizo, egg and cheese.
The Shed’s mushroom soup is famous and contains no chile at all.
Pink Adobe offers a chopped salad with grilled chicken breast and fried blue tortilla strips.
Did you just want a grilled cheese sandwich with fries? The Pantry, an old-fashioned diner, has your number.
A traditional Italian restaurant, Osteria d’Assisi, composed this beautiful Caesar salad with Bibb lettuce for our friend Patricia.
Also at Osteria, Nola and I had plenty to eat sharing one order of lobster and wild mushrooms on Arborio risotto, served over a spring pea sauce. This photo shows one of our two portions after splitting by the kitchen.
You can even find a New York-style toasted bagel with salmon gravlax and all the trimmings, at Luminaria restaurant.
Blended Cuisine
Because there are talented chefs and willing patrons, there’s also Santa Fe food that bridges cultures.
The downtown Plaza Cafe, Santa Fe’s oldest restaurant (1905), offers this tasty “Mexican Shakshuka” with poached eggs, chipotle sauce, feta cheese, guacamole, cilantro and pickled onions, served with hash browns and a soft tortilla.
At Sazon, Nola enjoyed this eggplant stuffed with zucchini, corn, tomato and Gruyère cheese.
Restaurant Venues
Santa Fe food is not only attractively plated and delicious, it’s also served in pleasant locales. In the summertime, there are many options like this shady patio at Pink Adobe.
Year round, there are many interiors like this art-deco space at Hervé Wine Bar.
Another popular indoor venue is the spacious dining room in La Fonda’s La Plazuela restaurant.
By contrast, Sazon restaurant embraces you tightly. It surrounds the diner with walls covered with huge portraits, mostly of Frida Kahlo. The aggressive decor is consistent with the restaurant’s personality, which tries to program the diner’s experience from the moment they sit down. No doubt some patrons welcome the guidance, but we thought it was pushy when they brought us a platter of five mole sauces that we didn’t want and had not requested.
More typically Santa Fe is Cafe Pasqual. It has images on its walls, but they don’t dominate the experience. Pasqual is cosy and friendly, and not claustrophobic.
I hope this brief photobook whets your appetite for Santa Fe food. If you add Santa Fe to your destination plans, I think it will surely please you.
Image Credit: All photos taken by Art Chester using iPhone