13 Amazing Restaurants To Experience In Santa Fe

Santa Fe is a food items town, with much more restaurants for every capita than any other town in the United States. You’ll find enjoyable cuisine, at any time-shifting, different, and mouth watering. Santa Fe has attained a distinguished spot on the globe culinary food stuff map with its revolutionary Southwestern fare and hearty New Mexican dishes like green chile stew.

New Mexicans enjoy their inexperienced chiles, the point out vegetable, spicy and delicious. You will obtain numerous types of eco-friendly chile burgers, all fantastic. If your server asks if you want purple or eco-friendly, they’re referring to the sort of chile you’d like served with your enchiladas, chile rellenos, or other dishes. You can order “Christmas” if you want to attempt each.

If you are hungry for inventive modern delicacies, you are going to come across it here in Santa Fe: Spanish, French, Italian, Mexican, Center Japanese, African, or Indian. You will come across quite a few dining places in old adobe residences, with stunning courtyards and patios for eating in warmer temperature. Community chefs shop the farmers industry for substances to enrich their farm-to-desk menus.

In no distinct order, here are my Santa Fe favorites from the concierge’s solutions from Inn of The 5 Graces.

1. Cafe Martin

Nine-time James Beard Awards finalist Chef Martin Rios of Cafe Martin is recognized frequently for his innovative flavor mixtures and emphasis on fresh, regional produce and organic and natural meats and poultry. You’ll savor Southwestern, Asian, and French influences in an intimate curated house wherever a determination to the facts boosts the successful delicacies. Order the pan-seared Maine scallops appetizer and roasted New Zealand lamb rack as the principal dish, with the truffled orzo “mac & cheese.” 

Opt for your favored wine from a collection intended to make the most of your working experience. I picked a delectable 2018 Atamisque Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina, a classical pink with plum and blackberry jam, hints of violet, cedar, and a whiff of herbs and liqueur.

Buy your autographed duplicate of the Restaurant Martin cookbook by emailing [email protected]

Pro Tip: Really do not pass up the great molten bittersweet chocolate cake for dessert. Or try the lemon meringue pie with lemon curd and vanilla Mascarpone cream, pistachio cake, contemporary berries, and berry sorbet.

2. 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar

Offering a truly French expertise considering that 1995, exactly where Southwestern cuisine typically usually takes the limelight, Chef Lous Moskow presents an elegantly personal restaurant serving strange, resourceful delicacies accompanied by an intensive worldly wine record. The French onion soup is a vintage at 315 Cafe & Wine Bar. The Chef improvements the menu monthly, and in December, when we visited, I loved the quail on a bed of sweet potatoes with a lemon tart for dessert.

Professional Tip: Try out the tender venison scaloppini with huckleberry demi-glace.

3. Izanami

Open up for indoor or out of doors pavilion dining, Izanami is upscale izakaya fare, with tiny plates accompanied by the most intensive choice of top quality Japanese sake in a everyday atmosphere. Savor sushi and sashimi made by Chef Shigeru Usuki from seafood flown directly from Tokyo. Incredible! Ninety p.c of the wagyu beef, pork, hen, and develop are organic and natural or sustainably elevated by area organic and natural farmers and ranchers.

I enjoy the assortment of bento box picks, the rice balls stuffed with spicy crab, and the Colorado lamb chops. The pickles, desserts, and ice cream are produced in-house.

Pro Idea: Get the Chocolate raspberry dome or the carrot cake for dessert.

4. Sassella

Named for a hamlet recognised for its vineyards close to the location wherever award-profitable Learn Chef Cristian Pontiggia grew up, Sassella provides a great dining experience merging new-environment Italian cuisine with old-entire world traditions. Savor the yellowfin tuna tartar or the Chef’s board of prosciutto, salami, and cheeses. Get pleasure from the Chef’s Lobster Risotto or Mediterranean white sea bass for the key class. Add a chosen wine to pair with the dish. Or, for a special occasion, indulge in the nine-class Sassella Degustazione with wine parings.

Pro Suggestion: For dessert, really do not skip the Tiramisu duo, basic tiramisu and gelato with an right after-supper mint chocolate martini.

5. Rio Chama Steakhouse

Located in the oldest community in Santa Fe, the Barria de Analco, the district on the other side of the river, Rio Chama Steakhouse gives brunch, lunch, dinner, beverages, and content hour, as well as musical amusement. The six-cheese fondue for the desk is a terrific starter, or the cash sampler with shrimp, calamari, buffalo sausage, and fried avocado with spicy sauces.

Pair the jumbo shrimp, lobster tail, crawfish etouffee, or chile relleno with the selection of Key Steaks and specialty cuts like the long bone tomahawk.

Professional Suggestion: Love the Kahlua coffee cheesecake for dessert.

6. La Boca

Motivated by Spain and the Mediterranean since 2006, 8-time James Beard Award Nominee Chef James Cambell Caruso’s menu at La Boca changes seasonally, reflecting fresh, neighborhood elements. It feels like a lively European wine bar, with The New York Occasions describing the menu as “modern re-inventions of typical Spanish cuisine.” You will locate modern day Spanish tapas paired with an intensive range of Sherries and Spanish wines and stay tunes.

Pro Idea: I enjoy a Rioja with Tapas like Moroccan carrot hummus, sauteed shrimp, or West Coast black mussels in coconut salsa verde.

7. Café Pasqual’s

A festive corner café with colorful Mexican folks art décor, Café Pasqual’s serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner employing refreshing, seasonal, organic create and by natural means elevated meats. Chef Katharine Kagel’s gourmand Santa Fe creations reflect Asian and Mediterranean influences. Savor special omelets of the day, golden blintzes, or avocado toast with poached eggs and the functions.

Love Oaxacan tamales, tacos, or a grilled bison burger for lunch. Dinner features the filet mignon, grilled shrimp, or mole enchiladas.

Pro Idea: Do not pass up the extensive desserts. Choices consist of the Meyer lemon meringue tartlet and prickly pear sorbet with an almond gem cookie.

8. El Farol

The place for a Flamenco evening meal present each and every Friday and Saturday night time, El Farol is well known as Santa Fe’s most historic and legendary cafe and bar. Enjoy Spanish and Italian little plates like calamari frito, Angus beef skewers, or chicharrones. The Paella El Farol is exceptional, produced with chicken, chorizo, shrimp, mussels, lima beans, romesco, saffron, and Carnaroli rice. Locate New Mexico favorites like tacos, inexperienced chile burgers, inexperienced chile rooster enchiladas, and the best wines.

Professional Suggestion: Conserve home for Chocolate Decadence, prosperous chocolate cake, dim chocolate mousse, darkish chocolate ganache, and raspberry coulis.

9. Sazon

Initially from Mexico Town, Chef Fernando Olea produces present-day and conventional Mexican dishes, tantalizing Santa Fe since 1991. This James Beard Foundation 2022 Nominee at Sazon specializes in mole, the heart of Mexican delicacies. Appreciate shrimp with Thai chili aioli or little one grasshoppers in chile oil on an avocado tortilla, or savor the Chef’s Degustacion 9-course tasting menu.

The salmon wrapped in filo dough is amazing. Enjoy tequila, mescal, and agave tastings on Wednesdays and Fridays. Sazon boasts the town’s most intensive collection.

Pro Suggestion: Indulge in the Helado de Mole Poblano, Chef’s unique mole poblano ice product floating in chocolate with crisps, for dessert.

10. Geronimo

Geronimo merges traditional and modern American cuisine with an Asian flair in a heat and inviting “Borrego Dwelling,” built by Geronimo Lopez in 1756. Government Chef Sllin Cruz generates an award-successful, seasonally shifting high-quality eating menu. Savor Wagyu beef carpaccio and wild mushroom sherry bisque for starters and mesquite-grilled lobster tails or Tellicherry rubbed elk tenderloin for your primary system.

Pro Idea: Save home for the banana-chocolate tart or new Meyer lemon crepe.

11. SantaCafe

One particular of Santa Fe’s most wonderful courtyard patios for dining, SantaCafe has been housed in Santa Fe’s most elegant historic house for in excess of 40 many years. It was ordered in 2019 by Quinn Stephenson, the Santa Fe restauranteur who also owns the legendary Coyote Café.

Quinn has fused fashionable cuisine with previous-environment magnificence, giving regionally sourced components. I beloved the luscious lobster salad starter with the pan-seared salmon with asparagus for the key dish. The courtyard ambiance feels like home.

12. Coyote Café

Opened in 1987, Coyote Café is a downtown mainstay that continues with a track record for adding world model to French-Asian influences. The upstairs rooftop cantina offers the best bird’s-eye view of bustling downtown Santa Fe with bar treats and compact plates like tempura shrimp, tacos, and margarita variations galore.

At the Coyote Café, you feel a perception of local community and a real enthusiasm for modern-day Southwestern delicacies. Test the signature cornbread with three flavors of butter then the mussels posole in a white wine sauce. Indulge in the grilled quail or the cast iron-seared filet mignon for your principal system.

Professional Suggestion: Wrap up with a Rock Star, a strawberry lemon fall with pop-rock sweet on the rim.

13. Dinner For Two

Celebrating 20 several years, Meal for Two boasts the greatest steaks in New Mexico, awarded by Vacation and Leisure, and Santa Fe Reporter’s finest pleased hour, finest cocktail, best bartender, and most effective fantastic dining. We appreciated the property-produced coconut shrimp, the basic tableside Caesar salad, and the veal marsala. Go fancy and indulge in the 16-ounce Chateaubriand for two tableside. For dessert, the standard bananas Foster orchestrated tableside introduced back memories.

Professional Idea: Get the slicing-edge Signature Like Bubble Cocktail, a margarita combined with passion fruit juice, cherry bitters, and Patron tequila topped with a smoke bubble that you pop when your drink arrives.

Want additional Santa Fe dining places? Test out 6 Awesome Dining places To Get A Genuine Taste Of Santa Fe.