Restaurants & Chefs
Everything old is new again on the Santa Fe dining scene
By JOHN MARIANI
More than any epicurean metropolis I know in the West, Santa Fe has gone through some major changes in its restaurant scene, with important older restaurants acquiring new chefs, new owners, and new looks.
Rosewood Hotels & Resorts
Veal medallions with crimini mushrooms and roasted asparagus at The Anasazi Restaurant & Bar
In fact, if you haven't dined out in Santa Fe in the last three years, you really can't have much of an opinion about the city's gastro-landscape.
Take The Anasazi Restaurant & Bar at the Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi . The featured restaurant of the 19-year-old boutique hotel, which is richly appointed with New Mexican folk art, previously focused largely on modern Southwestern cuisine. But a new chef, a Brit named Oliver Ridgeway (formerly of New York's posh Carlyle hotel), has introduced a menu with a more contemporary global reach, while never straying too far from the flavors or ingredients of the Southwest.
Thus, he'll wrap whipped goat cheese and mascarpone mousse in thinly sliced avocado, top it with shaved macadamia nuts, then set it afloat in a bath of gazpacho. A creamy torchon of Hudson Valley foie gras comes with grilled peaches, sweet ice-wine syrup, and buttery brioche. And Alaskan halibut is complemented by zucchini blossoms, maitake mushrooms, fava beans, spicy chorizo sausage, and a bubbly Champagne emulsion.
Doug Merriam
The whitewashed walls at The Compound Restaurant
The Coyote Cafe, opened in 1987 by Mark Miller, one of the pioneers of Southwestern cuisine, is now under the ownership of chef Eric DiStefano, who built his rep at Geronimo on Canyon Road. Coyote Cafe's colorful rustic-chic Southwestern décor is still much the same, but DiStefano has broadened the global fusion menu and become more generous in his portions.
To wit: a stack of wild white shrimp on griddled corn cakes with chipotle butter, creamy guacamole, and tomato relish; butter-braised lobster and lobster mushrooms with herbed corn polenta laced with basil oil; and New Mexican rack of lamb and loin with a honey-mustard crust, crispy rice cakes, and a mango-serrano mint glaze.
It's been nearly 10 years since Mark Kiffin (a 2005 James Beard Foundation Award winner as Best Chef of the Southwest) took over the reins at The Compound, but his menu has ever-evolved. This Santa Fe classic, which opened in the late 1950s, was once better known for its social crowd than for its food. But now it is a place everyone goes to dine well, whether within the restaurant's whitewashed walls or on the tranquil garden patio.
Wolfgang Kaehler/Corbis
El Gordo chimichanga with black beans, pico de gallo, and guacamole at the Coyote Cafe
Kiffin knows well the discipline required for simplicity in cooking, so his signature buttermilk roast chicken with creamed spinach and luscious foie gras pan gravy is a model of fusion — old and new — cuisine; he sides a warm flan of sweet corn with lobster-riddled succotash, and his lamb sirloin comes with a Mediterranean-style compote of eggplant, tomato, and white beans drizzled with a fig sauce laced with Madeira wine.
And if you're looking for Santa Fe's best new restaurant of the last two years, head for the very casual La Boca, where chef/owner James Campbell Caruso makes real savory sense of the "small plate" with dishes like white anchovies on toasted country bread, juicy Spanish albondigas meatballs in tomato sauce, and cinnamon-rubbed shrimp on the same plate with hearty blood sausage and a passion-fruit crema.
The City Different has never been so diverse.
Info
• The Anasazi Restaurant & Bar: Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi, 113 Washington Ave., 505-988-3236, www.innoftheanasazi.com
• The Compound Restaurant: 653 Canyon Road, 505-982-4353, www.compoundrestaurant.com
• Coyote Cafe: 132 W. Water St., 505-983-1615, www.coyotecafe.com
• La Boca: 72 W. Marcy St., 505-982-3433, www.labocasantafe.com
Issue: September 2009
