Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [216]
More than any other downtown restaurant, the Plaza feels like a real part of day-to-day Santa Feans’ lives. Locals eat here, but so do travelers in search of a good square meal. Below the clock on the wall is a movable-letter board on which are spelled out “Important Phone Numbers,” which include the mayor, the governor, the representatives in Congress, the president of the United States, and the police chief, as well as a New Mexico road conditions report.
Rancho de Chimayó
Route 520
505–351–4444
Chimayó, NM
LD | $$
North of Santa Fe, through the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the road leads toward the ancient village of Chimayó. It is a beautiful journey, past apple stands and adobe homes draped with bright red chile ristras (ropes of pods) hung out to dry. Built a century ago by the Jaramillo family, whose ancestors arrived in the 1600s, Rancho de Chimayó is a spacious home of wide wood planks and low-beamed ceilings, hammered tin chandeliers, and a capacious fireplace. It became a restaurant in 1965, and since then it has gained fame not only for its charm and ambience, but for a kitchen that exalts the cuisine of New Mexico.
Native New Mexicans seldom sit down for a “bowl of chili.” In fact, chili as a meal isn’t listed on the Rancho de Chimayó menu. But there are few dishes this kitchen makes in which the chile pepper doesn’t play a vital role. New Mexican cooks use their native pod in stews and omelets, on top of steaks, stuffed into sopaipillas, and as a marinade for the fire-breathing native specialty known as carne adovada—pork infused with a pepper bite. If you are coming to Rancho de Chimayó only once, and if you like hot food, carne adovada is the dish to order. The pork glistens red, and has turned tender from its long marinade in a sauce made from hot red chile pods. On the side of this fiery pork the kitchen provides a mound of posole (hominy corn)—mild little lumps of tenderness to soothe the tongue.
For those who want something a little less inciendiary, Rancho de Chimayó’s menu also offers sopaipillas relleñas, in which the triangular fried breads are stuffed with beef, beans, tomatoes, and Spanish rice, and topped with red or green chili sauce. There are flautas, too—rolled corn tortillas filled with chicken or pork and fried crisp, topped with cool sour cream.
For us, it is a special joy to to drive to Rancho de Chimayó through the foothills of the Sangre de Christo mountains in the cool of an autumn evening, when ristras decorate adobe homes and late-day autumn light makes sagebrush shimmer. Candlelit tables are arrayed on a stepped patio outdoors, strolling guitarists strum southwestern tunes, and the air smells of sagebrush and native cooking.
Roque’s Carnitas
Washington and Palace
Sante Fe, NM
L (closed in winter) | $
Roque’s is a jolly little chuckwagon that serves one thing: a sandwich made of a sturdy flour tortilla that has been heated on a grate over a charcoal fire. The warm tortilla is folded around succulent beef, and plenty of it—thin slices of marinated top round sizzled on a grate—along with onions and chiles. Atop the beef goes fiery jalapeño salsa.
As soon as you peel back the foil and try to gather up the tortilla for eating, chunks of salsa tumble out, meat juice leaks, onions slither, and plump circles of earth-green chile pop free. There is a tall garbage can near the carnitas wagon, and it is not unusual to see two or three well-dressed customers gathered around it, bending over at the waist and chomping on their sandwiches so that all its spillage falls right into the trash. The choice location for eating, though, is a bench in the nearby Plaza, which is the heart of the old city. Here you can sit and lean far forward as you dine, thus