Before our trip to Santa Fe earlier this year, I had a friend who was posting pictures on Facebook about the trip his wife and he took to the area just the week before we were going to be there. The day before we were to leave on our vacation, I called my friend up - who was now back home - to pick his brain about where to go, what to see, and where to eat during our time in Santa Fe. It turns out that he had never been there before and had turned to a mutual friend of ours who lives in Denver who goes to Santa Fe once or twice a year with his wife. Via e-mail, he sent me notes that our friend had provided to him about the spots to hit in Santa Fe. One of the places he suggested was a meal at Maria's New Mexican Kitchen.
Since this was our first trip to New Mexico, we found some subtle differences between traditional Mexican food and what the locals called "New Mexican" food. First of all, they use a lot of potatoes in their foods. Burritos, enchiladas, green chile soup - everything along that line of food had diced potatoes included. Secondly, they use pinto beans rather than black beans or refried beans. I determined that I liked the pinto beans better than black beans - and I like black beans a lot! (Refried beans? Meh!) And finally, the chile sauce they have in New Mexico is the best. They love their chile peppers in New Mexico - the Hatch chiles, the Chimayo chiles, and the Pueblo chiles are the most common chiles that we encountered during our visit. I prefer the green chile sauces over the red, but there are many who prefer doing it "Christmas-style" - the red and green sauces mixed together. Well, we were told that Maria's is about as authentic "New Mexican"-style food there is.
Maria and Gilbert Lopez started their business in 1952 as a takeout restaurant with food made in their kitchen, their kitchen table being the main counter to make their New Mexican specialties that they sold primarily during the annual Santa Fe Fiesta. (The 311th Santa Fe Fiesta was held the week after we were there. It's the oldest civic celebration in the United States.) Concerns that the fiesta was going away from a celebration of local foods and cultures to more of an Anglo-style carnival, city officials asked locals to take back the fiesta with making local foods that were more indicative of the culture than funnel cakes and hot dogs.
Maria came up with something that she claims to have invented - the tortilla burger. It featured a ground beef patty that was grilled, then stuck between two tortilla shells, topped with pinto beans and a choice of either red or green chile sauce. (Or both - Christmas-style!) It was such a hit during the 1952 Fiesta that people kept asking Maria to make more after the celebration was over.
Gilbert Lopez saw that his wife's cooking was received in a positive manner that he decided to add a patio onto their house on Cordova Road. The first year the patio was open was literally a washout as rare rainstorms pelted the region incessantly. But the Lopez family continued on and expanded their small house into a restaurant - much of the same building that Maria's started out in over 70 years ago is part of their present day restaurant.
The head of the New Mexico State Patrol, Don Hammond, ate at Maria's on a regular basis. He made an offer to buy the Lopez family out after he retired from the state police force. After Hammond owned it for a few years, Maria's was passed along through two more owners from the 60's until the mid-80's when Al Lucero bought Maria's.
Al Lucero and his wife Laurie grew up in Santa Fe and knew all too well about the traditional New Mexican dishes. But one other thing that Al knew about was margaritas. After purchasing Maria's in 1986, Al Lucero brought in different types of tequilas and concocted a number of different types of margaritas to choose from. Maria's boasts over 100 different types of margaritas and are adamant that they use only true Mexican tequila that is at least 51% agave juice, with real triple-sec, and fresh-squeezed lemon juice. Maria's uses lemon juice in their margaritas because of the year-round consistency of lemons over limes. (I prefer lime juice in my margaritas rather than lemon juice, however.)
The traditional New Mexican food continued on with the Lucero's in charge, but margaritas put Maria's on the map with locals and tourists alike. The Lucero's rode the wave of popularity for 27 years before selling Maria's in 2013 to Gerald Peters, a local art gallery owner and the head of the Santa Fe Dining Group that included La Casa Sena, a Mediterranean-style restaurant; Hidden Mountain Brewing Company, a local brewery/restaurant; and Rio Chama Prime Steakhouse. The Santa Fe Dining Group continues to run Maria's today.
Maria's is located at a funky intersection near U.S. Highway 285 where Cordova Road and Camino de Los Martinez meet up. (see map) To get into Maria's coming east off U.S. Highway 285, you have to go past the place as there is no left turn into their lot. As Cordova Road curves a bit, there's a short street that takes you to Camino de Los Martinez on the left. Take another left on Camino de Los Martinez and it eventually empties into westbound Cordova Road. Maria's is on the right.
Now, there is a strip mall just to the east of Maria's and we went in there to park. But the owners of that strip mall - with a couple other restaurants in it - posted signs that parking there is not for Maria's and violators will get towed. We found that out when we mistaken pulled into that lot. The entrance to Maria's lot is between the back of the strip mall and Maria's building. It's a tight and narrow entrance, so you can easily miss it - like we did the first time we tried to find it.
The parking lot is behind Maria's and we found it to be absolutely packed. It was getting late and my wife was hungry and we didn't have a plan B for dinner that evening. So I drove around the lot a couple times waiting for someone to come out. I suggested that my wife get out and go get our name in at the hostess stand while I look for a place to park. She did just that. And about three minutes later, someone came out with a to-go order and got into their truck and took off allowing me to take their place.
When I got inside, I found my wife seated at a table in the first dining room after you walk into Maria's. I was surprised to see her there in a somewhat sparse dining area given how packed the parking lot was. She said that she was seated as soon as she walked up to the stand. Menus were already on the table when I sat down and it wasn't long before some chips and salsas showed up.
Our server that evening was a 30-something guy by the name of Maxwell. Talking with him later on in the evening, we found that Maxwell was originally from Minnesota, but moved to Santa Fe when he was 11. "I guess you can say I'm a Midwestern native, but I consider myself a New Mexican," he said.
Drinks were the first order of business that evening and, true to their reputation, they had over 100 different types of margarita drinks on the drink menu. My buddy who was down there the week before had gone to Maria's. He told me, "I probably had one too many of the La Ultima margaritas while we were there." It featured El Tesoro blanco tequila with a shot of Cointreau and lemon juice.
However, I saw my favorite type of margarita on the menu - the Santiago which featured Herradura silver tequila and Cointreau - the original "Silver Coin" margarita it said in the menu. My wife ordered up a Paloma. The drinks were not cheap - $18 for my margarita and $14 for my wife's Paloma. My margarita was good, maybe not $18 good, and I think I would have liked it better with fresh lime juice than fresh lemon juice.
Maria's features a number of tequilas that are available by the glass or in flights. They had a number of celebrity tequilas on hand, being that having your own tequila brand is sort of the fashionable thing for some famous people these days. Tequilas backed by entertainers such as Sammy Hagar, Ron White, Nick Jonas and Adam Levine were featured on the tequila menu. I even found out to my surprise that NBA basketball great LeBron James has his own tequila and Maria's had it!
The food menu at Maria's didn't really stick out as being anything different from other Mexican restaurants we'd been to in the past. They had fajitas, chimichangas, burritos, enchiladas and tacos on the menu. There were some unique New Mexican foods on the menu including the Carne Adovada - lean chunks of pork marinated in a house-made secret sauce, then slowly baked in the oven at a low temperature. The Galisteo Chicken is a naturally-raised rotisserie-baked chicken seasoned with a variety of spices. And the Tostadas Compuestas de Pollo is a crispy corn tortilla topped with seasoned chicken, cheese and guacamole.
I started out ordering a cup of the green chile stew Maria's featured on the menu. The only problem is that my dinner came out before I got the cup of chile. (I previously noticed a cup of green chile stew on a counter behind us in the dining room and figured it was mine. It was.)
For my main entree that evening, I went with the blue corn enchiladas. They were filled with ground beef and topped with cheese and a green chile sauce. Quite actually, they were nothing special. And they were expensive - $23.50 for three small enchiladas, a side of refried (not pinto) beans, rice and some shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes.
My wife got a beef taco and a chile relleno a la carte. Beans and rice also came on the side. My wife also thought her meal was just all right. "The chile relleno is good," she said. "But it's not worth the price." Her plate of food was around $18.00.
The green chile stew was good, but it was $8.00. Thankfully, Maxwell apologized and said that it would be no charge after he brought it to me since he forgot to bring it out first. Sopapillas came with the green chile stew and with the fresh honey on the table, they may have been the highlight of the meal.
When we were talking with Maxwell, we remarked that we were surprised that there weren't many people in the dining room considering the amount of cars in the lot. He said that there were more dining rooms in the back of the place including a large party room that was being used by the local Kiwanis that evening as a pre-Zozobra get together. He asked if we were in town for the Zozobra celebration and we had no idea what that was. He proceeded to tell us about the burning of Zozobra. "It's a big deal," he said. "They'll have about 50,000 people or more in town just for that."
Before we left, we took a look around Maria's to check out the bar area and some of the other dining spaces. There was an impressive selection of tequilas behind the bar. The bar and the dining rooms were decorated in a traditional adobe decor. Maxwell saw us as we were looking around and he said, "They've added onto the original building a few times." You could easily tell walking around the restaurant that there were definitely some rooms added on in different spots.
Maria's New Mexican Kitchen was just OK. For the cost vs. caliber ratio, it was extremely expensive compared to the quality of the food we had. The bill was around $90 bucks - it would have been closer to $100 had we gotten charged for the green chile stew. The hiccup of not bringing the stew was the only slip-up with Maxwell that evening. But, still, if you want basic, yet extremely overpriced Mexican food, then Maria's is your place. It's not that the food was bad, it just wasn't worth the price we paid.
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