Santa Fe is understood for its expansive artwork scene, and that penchant for creativity definitely applies to the culinary arts as effectively. Simply as its well-known galleries and resident artisans have calcified the town as a full-blown cultural mecca, its eating places, bars, and bakeries are doing the identical with well-liked vittles like inexperienced chilies and blue corn, but in addition an entire rainbow of flavors from pink chile donuts to glittery purple mochas.
Meals-wise, it’s a metropolis that threads the needle from old-school to new-school, weaving collectively a patchwork of native and international flavors. Right here, conventional New Mexican delicacies will get new twists from transplants, innovators, and culinary artists impressed by the area’s hanging pure magnificence and agricultural assets.
From bulging breakfast burritos and fresh-from-the-fryer fritters to seasonal tasting menus and funky beer gardens, listed here are a number of the finest locations to eat and drink in your visit to Santa Fe.
Rise and shine with spicy donuts
In a nondescript house alongside Cerrillos Highway, Whoo’s Donuts is an excellent shock that defies its modest motif. Comply with the aromas of maple-bacon, cinnamon-sugar, and candy corn cake to find a dizzying array of colourful donuts. The store doles out wildly unique recipes, together with seasonal one-offs like summer time peach and strawberry-rhubarb. All of the Americana staples are current and accounted for as effectively, like vanilla sprinkles and Boston cream, however what you’re actually after are the Santa Fe novelties: the blue corn-blueberry-lavender tastes as vibrant because the sheen on its fruity frosting, the inexperienced chile apple fritter provides a punch of savory smoke to a doughy traditional, and pink chile-bacon-toffee marries salt and sugar with a bit of warmth.
Discover your breakfast burrito bliss
Breakfast burritos are to Santa Fe as cheesesteaks are to Philly. The perfect morning gasoline earlier than a day of mountaineering the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, seize ’em to-go at Betterday Coffee. The espresso is certainly wonderful, and this is likely one of the few locations on the town the place you’ll discover cafe au lait on the menu. However the stars are the breakfast burritos bursting with tacky scrambled eggs, crispy potatoes, and pink and/or inexperienced chilies. Choices embody sausage, veggie, bacon, or bean and cheese burritos, however the true winner is the brisket burrito, filled with succulent slices of smoky beef.
Pair savory brunch with Hungarian cake
Dolina Cafe & Bakery appears to be like like a quaint cottage you’d anticipate to come upon in a forest. Which is sensible, contemplating Dolina means “valley” in proprietor Annamaria Brezna’s native Slovak. She outfits her menu of sweets and savories with New Mexican and Jap European flavors. This features a morning soup of New Mexico lamb broth and wild rice, together with a Slovakian stew referred to as kapustnica, brimming with sauerkraut, prunes, and klobasa sausage. Don’t sleep on these pastries on the entrance counter, both. The chocolate chip-walnut cookies are a number of the finest you’ll discover anyplace, and the fruit-filled strudels and makos dios (a Hungarian poppy seed cake studded with walnuts and raspberry preserves) are habit-forming.
Sip mezcal in model
One among Santa Fe’s important cocktail bars is a teeny mezcal-spiked nook referred to as La Reina. This whimsical watering gap is tucked into a cultured adobe-style motel, El Rey Court, which appears to be like prefer it’d make an ideal setting for a twee desert-chic Wes Anderson film, with vibrant pops of shade and wall doodles of a cactus smoking. Pull up a stool and let your bolo-clad bartender whip you up one thing with agave. The tight menu rotates, however staples embody a masterful Ranch Water with tequila, Topo Chico, and lime. Or go for La Ultima Palabra, made with Genepy, maraschino liqueur, mezcal, and lime juice, which in some way makes pine-y, smoky, and fruity flavors style good collectively.
Throw your self an al fresco pizza social gathering
If you happen to’re at El Rey Court on a weekend, chances are high you’ll luck out with some wood-fired sourdough pizza courtesy of Tender Fire Kitchen, which generally units up store by the lodge’s again garden Thursdays by Saturdays. This roving cellular pizzeria makes use of naturally leavened dough—fermented for 3 days—to create thin-crust pies wealthy with ripe, advanced flavors. Seasonal choices change steadily, however instance toppings embody creamed nettles, scorching honey, or coconut creamed corn for the vegan elote pie. Tender Fireplace’s gluten-free pizza makes use of dough made out of buckwheat, brown rice, psyllium husk, chia, and flax, which isn’t solely tasty and completely different, however low-key wholesome (till you negate all of it with a sourdough chocolate chip cookie, which you completely ought to).
Go for old-school Santa Fe consolation
This simple diner in Santa Fe Plaza has been slinging tamales and enchiladas since 1975. It’s a spot so hallowed, it lays declare to the coining of the time period “breakfast burrito” and the phrase “Christmas-style,” referring to the combo of each pink and inexperienced chilies. These are daring claims, but when there’s one establishment that may discuss the discuss and stroll the stroll, it’s Tia Sophia’s. Although the restaurant has moved places and grown over time, its timeworn recipes endure. Breakfast staples embody eggs with chile stew, huevos rancheros, and requisite breakfast burritos. Whereas lunchtime favorites run the gamut from ooey-gooey enchiladas to Sophia’s Sandwich, a ham-melt on a tortilla with guac and salsa.
Get your inexperienced chile cheeseburger repair
Proper up there with a bangin’ breakfast burrito, inexperienced chile cheeseburgers are important eats in Santa Fe—however few scratch the itch like these at Shake Foundation. Wanting like a retro roadside burger stand bedecked with dangling chile ristras, this informal counter spot grinds sirloin and chuck into plump patties, slathers them in Jack cheese and inexperienced chilies, and heaps them on buttered buns. The menu is refreshingly concise, largely just some iterations of cheeseburger, with extra choices for lamb or bison, and oddly sufficient, fried oyster sandwiches with pink chile mayo. Because the title suggests, in addition they have milkshakes.
Deal with your self to the finer issues: truffle mac & cheese
Each metropolis wants their very own Restaurant Martín, the sort of venerable, enduring restaurant with a rigorous dedication to seasonality and an affinity for beautiful presentation. Helmed by acclaimed chef Martin Rios, that is considered one of Santa Fe’s fixtures for finer eating (but nonetheless not froufrou or outrageously costly, since Santa Fe retains issues fairly informal). The dynamic menu consists of the Snake River Farm double-cut pork chop with tamarind-black malt glaze, garnet yam confit, pickled honshemiji mushrooms, grilled peaches, and blackberry-ancho discount; or pan-seared salmon with prawn-sushi rice pave, sesame bok choy, Meyer lemon confit, and jalapeño-lemongrass dashi. No matter you do, don’t cross up the epic truffled orzo mac & cheese.
Pair your fermented ales with farmers’ market risotto
Santa Fe, like seemingly each different metropolis, is within the midst of a brewery increase, and on the forefront of that increase is Rowley Farmhouse Ales. Considerably hidden in a warehouse-filled a part of city on the southwest aspect, this hip gastropub and micro-brewery focuses on blended fermentation beers, with an emphasis on puckering farmhouse ales and sours. It’s delightfully audacious ales embody the Germophile, a espresso bitter that defies its oxymoron-sounding description by tempering the sourness with dry and tart flavors from Thiriez yeast, and dry-hopping the brew with espresso, leading to a quaff that’s completely bitter, tart, and bitter. Rowley’s seasonal meals menu exceeds gastropub expectations with pork stomach corndogs, inexperienced chile tuna melts, baked-to-order pineapple upside-down cake, and an ever-changing, vegetable-laden Farmers’ Market Risotto.
Go farm-to-taco
Handmade tortillas are the specialty at Paloma, the place chef Nathan Mayes makes use of heirloom landrace corn from Oaxaca that’s nixtamalized in-house. Begin with Baja sea bass ceviche, squash blossom quesadillas, or smoked hen sopecitos made with dainty blue corn masa truffles and pickled onions. The tacos—just like the pork shoulder carnitas sweetened with roasted pineapple or the crispy cauliflower accented with golden raisins and almond salsa—are mainly obligatory with a purpose to totally recognize the feel and taste of the tortillas. However bigger plates, like mole amarillo oyster mushrooms or quick rib birria, are price making room for.
Sip margaritas with a view
For a contemporary, high-end tackle Southwestern delicacies, cease at Coyote Cafe in downtown Santa Fe for chile morita prawns over griddled grit truffles, or duck leg confit with chayote and candy corn succotash. However for one thing extra informal, preserve it low-key at Coyote Cantina. Oh wait, sure—identical place. In addition to scenic views of the road beneath, the vigorous roof deck has shareable choices like mini chimichangas, barbecued duck quesadillas, pink chile beef Frito pie, and quenching margaritas. It additionally has a number of the tastiest tacos on the town, particularly the al pastor tacos with grilled pineapple, candy onion, and heady arbol salsa.
Drink espresso with the locals
Come for the smothered burritos and the cream-cheese-frosted cinnamon bundt cake, then come repeatedly for the beer-battered salmon tacos, the grilled tofu banh mi, and the seitan spring rolls. This frills-free, people-pleasing bastion of patio eating and coffee-sipping has been open since 1996. The Aroma Natural Espresso and surprisingly formidable menu benefit repeat visits. Significantly, for those who luck out on a day they nonetheless have saucer-sized cinnamon rolls in inventory, you may be spoiled without end.
Immerse your self in margarita clouds
It makes complete sense that Meow Wolf, the trippy immersive artwork expertise the place fridge doorways result in neon-lit passageways, would have an on-site bar so whimsical and over-the-top that it makes the Mad Tea Get together seem like Starbucks. Float Cafe & Bar is additional in all the fitting methods, with conventional absinthe drips, lattes bedazzled with glitter, and “Meowgaritas” tinted purple with butterfly pea flower tea and topped with puffy “clouds” of cotton sweet. Float serves equally eccentric espresso drinks and cocoa, like a purple scorching chocolate garnished with Fortunate Appeal marshmallows and “unicorn shimmer,” aka edible glitter. It’s a glowing instance of Santa Fe’s evolution as a metropolis whose well-established artistry is pushing the bounds with edible and potable artwork as effectively.
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