Dining-New Mexico
March 31, 2010(Note: Our New Mexico travel diary and photos are on our travel blog, at http://notares.yolasite.com/)
In May 2010 we spent a week in New Mexico, visiting Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos. The weather in early May didn't cooperate fully, plus we were in a tour group with a tight schedule and modest food expectations. So we knew this would be the polar opposite of our recent gourmet Monterey trip.
New Mexico is very proud of their chiles (never spell it chili when you're here). The big question here is "Red or Green?" This refers to red chile sauce or green chile sauce, the heat quotient of which varies according to chile aficianados. Because of this, if you want to try both, you request "Christmas", for obvious reasons!
Blue Corn Cafe and Brewery (lunch) 4056 Cerrillos Rd., Santa Fe, NM
An inexpensive strip-mall restaurant, at home amidst a sea of Red Lobster/IHOP/Olive Garden/etc. Suffice to say Carlos and I ate two starters, two entrees, a dessert and two beverages, with generous tip, for $50.
It was surprisingly spicy (which we like). But a Sonic burger (which we didn't notice until afterwards) would probably have just as filling, and cheaper. Although even cheaper would have been the Burger King across the street. In Santa Fe, we were told that even the fast food hamburgers come automatically with green chiles on the meat, LOL.
Tomasita's (lunch) 500 S Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM
This is supposedly one of the most popular, if not the most popular, SWestern restaurants in Santa Fe. There is a big sign when you walk in that announces, "We are not responsible for the chiles being too hot for out-of-towners to eat. If you think the chile sauces are going to be too hot for you, you can ask for them on the side."
OK, maybe elderly people from the Midwest might think these sauces are too hot. We thought they were moderately spicy, but I could eat them without difficulty and Carlos asked for hot sauce. Instead they brought him salsa, which wasn't hot at all – in fact, it was more sweet than anything else.
Both of us had opted for chicken enchiladas Christmas style with sides of guacamole for a stunning 85 cents extra for each. That brought us two big scoops of solid avocado chunks in fried tortilla cups! Had we realized they give such a generous serving of it we would have ordered just one and split it between us.
The enchiladas were good, but not that much more interesting than anything we get in the Bay Area. Yes, there are differences between Southwestern cooking and Mexican or Cal-Mex cooking, but they're relatively minor. This is food that Carlos and I like, but we don't love it enough to eat it all that often.
The best item were the sopaipillas. They were much better than Blue Corn Cafe's fried hunk of bread dough. These were lighter and flakier, and dynamite with butter and honey.
315 Bistro and Wine Bar 315 Old Santa Fe Trail, SFe, NM
The trips with Exploritas include most meals, often at the hotel dining rooms. Since these are mid-priced hotels, these aren't going to be gourmet meals and we knew that going in. Still, after our great meals in Monterey it was a real letdown to be suddenly dropped several levels below. On this trip there's one free night (although of course you can always go off on your own), so Carlos and I walked around downtown before ending up at our chosen restaurant, a bistro nearby. It’s actually been around for a few years, but closed its doors for a renovation and menu change late last year, so just reopened recently.
To our surprise it was very French, which was delightful. Carlos had a wonderful golden beet salad that had the usual arugula/goat cheese/sherry vinaigrette, but added well-rinsed salted capers as an unexpected addition. It was excellent, one of the best beet salads Carlos has eaten recently.
I chose the pre fixe which offered mashed sweet potato croquettes with mixed greens and red onions as the starter. The red onions were nice small dice, caramelized with good balsamic and used as delicate dabs of dressing with some olive oil. Both salads were just the right size and perfect starters.
Carlos had chosen a special, the pork osso bucco. It was enormous, larger than we had thought it would be, with an intense and amazing reduction sauce. The farro was a little too heavily coated with the sauce, making it almost too filling, but the raw arugula helped lighten it considerably. This was a truly amazing dish, a braise of skill that brought out the sweet porky flavor.
My pre fix was also pork, but a grilled slice of pork loin instead, served over cous-cous and creamed spinach. Although simple compared to the braised osso bucco, the flavors in my entree blended together beautifully.
We shared the small scoop of dark chocolate mousse. I ordered the decaf double espresso while Carlos had his usual cappuccino. Both were excellent, with the caffeinated grind having an almost nutty quality to it.
Many restaurants in Santa Fe and Albuquerque are participating in a special "Night Out" promotion, so my pre fixe was an amazing $18 for three courses. The pre fixe, one starter, one entree, one bottle of Pellegrino (Carlos is having trouble with non-Bay Area drinking water), and two coffee drinks, with tip totaled a mere $87.
315 does not equal Boulevard in the Bay Area, or even Andre's Bouchee in Carmel, but few places can. We picked this over Coyote Cafe, as we're not great fans of fusion cuisine. If we are ever in this area again, this is a restaurant we would look forward to a repeat visit.
Kakawa Chocolate House 1050 East Paseo de Peralta, SFe, NM
We were excited to learn there was a local specialty chocolatier, and even more pleased that our tour group was visiting two art galleries right across the street from it! We went over to check it out. They have unusual cacao drinks, most of them made without dairy. We tried a citrus cacao drink, which was an intense orange-lemon-chocolate drink.
Unfortunately, we are not fans of the European style of dark chocolate. They like dark sweet chocolate similar to Leonidas, which we find cloying and masks truly fine chocolate. Kakawa's style is this European dark sweet, so we tried four different truffles - pomegranate, honey liqueur, almond, and cherry-cardamon - but found them not really to our liking. Rich, but a little too sweet, a little too heavy-handed (the fillings had to be very strongly flavored to overcome the oversweetness of the chocolate), and untempered.
Michael Recchiuti still reigns supreme in our book. But we'll keep looking, LOL.
India House 2501 Cerrillos Rd., Santa Fe,
Please don't ask why we were eating Indian food in SFe. This was where the tour took us, and honestly, for a lunch buffet it was pretty good even by Bay Area standards. The raita wasn't thinned down, the ground beef kofta curry was actually really good, and the tandoori chicken wasn't overcooked. The naan was ordinary, though, and we kept having to bug them for more chai. This place has won "Best Ethnic Restaurant in Santa Fe" the last three years running, so if you're getting really tired of SWestern food, this will perk up your taste buds a bit. Although like all tourist towns, if you really like hot food, you're going to be out of luck. This is mild, by true hot curry standards.
Antonio's-A Taste of Mexico 1017 Paseo Del Pueblo Nor, El Prado,
We ate lunch at Antonio's near the Plaza, the first good Mexican food we've had since coming here. The chile sauces were nicely spicy and both the shrimp chimichanga (Carlos) and the chicken sopapilla (Jean) were very good. This place we would happily come back to, as we preferred it to Tomasita’s.
Trading Post Cafe 4179
Dinner was at The Trading Post in a private room. Very pretty room, old fashioned like all we've seen here. Decent Parmesan chicken breast but the waitress was so-so, ignoring our empty glasses after the dinner plates were removed, with no coffee offered along with dessert. In fact I don't think we even saw her again after the dessert plates were placed on the table.
This was one of the only two places we got to eat on our own, as all the other meals were provided by the tour. This turned out to be one of our favorites, mostly because they put some heat into both the guacamole and the chile sauces.
They’re famous for their old-fashioned chile rellenos. These are solid little bombs quite unlike the cheese stuffed chiles that everyone else serves. Instead CSC uses small flour tortillas, stuffs them with a solid mixture of shredded pork and cheese, then melts more cheese on top sprinkled with chopped green chiles. You can get it with red chile sauce, green chile sauce, or Christmas style. It’s amazingly filling – I couldn’t finish all of my pair.
Carlos’ combo plate was so-so. He got one chile relleno which was good, but the beef enchilada was absolutely terrible, so salty we couldn’t eat it. Beef, BTW, means ground beef in
Interestingly enough, their calabasitas (squash) side dish was really tasty, much more so than the spinach I got. The sopapillas were okay, not as good as Tomasita’s or Antonio’s.
The second time we came in for just a snack, splitting a steak quesadilla. It was a little chewy but very tasty, full of cheese and greaseless. We were also time-challenged and they did a great job of getting us out when we needed to go, which was nice.
This and Antonio’s, along with 315, were the only places we’d want to come back to. I’m sure there are better places, but time and budget (the tour guide was limited to $11/person lunch) just didn’t allow for them.
Summary:
Overall, although this wasn’t a foodie trip, it was adequate and occasionally very good. Carlos adored sopapillas, since anything starchy with butter and honey appeals to him instantly. OTOH, he disliked the watery whole pinto beans, preferring the usual Cal-Mex refried style, and the fact he couldn’t find a hot enough chile sauce or salsa frustrated him a bit – when we go out to breakfast he dumps salsa and Tabasco all over his hash browns, for example.
I often comment to others that establishments such as nursing homes and retirement communities are going to have turn their thinking upside down when the Boomers start arriving en masse. That also goes for food, I think. We don’t play bridge or bingo, and not all of us are interested in eating at Fresh Choice (in ABQ we ate one lunch at Sweet Tomatoes, which is very similar – shudder!).
Most of our fellow travelers admitted they don’t eat spicy or ethnic foods, which is fairly common for their generation. They also don’t splurge on fine restaurants the way Boomers do – we were one of two Boomer couples, and the other two went to Coyote Café as well as treatng themselves to a luxury spa treatment one evening. These older people were well-educated and affluent, but they spend their money differently than most of us Boomers. I think there will be big changes coming as the Boomers really start to retire en masse.
