Road Tips

Horno - Sante Fe, NM

One of the evenings while we were in Santa Fe, we decided to try out a place that had come highly recommended by the staff over at (the since closed) Fire & Hops restaurant.  When talking with a couple people over there as to where we should go for a good dinner, they both told us, "You need to go to Horno."  One of them turned another person nearby and said, "Hey, where else should the try for dinner while they're here in Santa Fe?"  He immediately said, "Horno."  So we made reservations to give Horno a try.  

David Sellers was living in New Hampshire and working toward a degree in philosophy.  While going to college, he was working as a baker at an all-organic bakery where he learned about locally-sourced sustainable foods made from scratch.  After graduating from Plymouth State University, Sellers made his way out to San Francisco where he learned more about cooking at restaurants in the bay area.  By 1997, the call of the southwest was strong for Sellers and he ended up in Santa Fe where he was the sous chef for Santacafé, an elegant restaurant situated in an early 20th century house.  

It was at Santacafé where Sellers met a young lady by the name of Heather.  Heather had grown up in upstate New York and had worked in restaurants in the Ithaca area before moving to New York City to pursue a modeling/actress career.  To help pay the bills between gigs, Heather worked for various fine dining restaurants under the Cafe Concepts umbrella, then later with the Fireman Hospitality Group where she helped open the acclaimed Redeye Grill located just across the street from Carnegie Hall.  It turned out that she was much more proficient working as a front of house restaurant manager than she was as an actress.  

But Heather was looking for something more in life and in 1998 she moved to New Mexico to join the AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer program that was associated with the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Fe.  And to make some additional money on the side, Heather went to work at Santacafé where she worked as a server, then was later the front of house manager.  That's where she met David Sellers.  

Pictured right - Heather and David Sellers.  Photo courtesy Edible New Mexico.  

David and Heather became a couple and married soon after.   After 10 years at Santacafé, the couple opened their first restaurant together in Santa Fe by the name of Amavi, a critically-acclaimed bistro that specialized in Mediterranean cuisine and wine selections.  

After running Amavi for 4 years, the Sellers sold Amavi and moved to Connecticut where he was the head chef at Max Fish, a New England-style farm-to-table seafood restaurant and raw bar in Glastonbury.  But, once again, the call of the southwest beckoned David and Heather, and in 2014 the couple and their two boys moved to Albuquerque to help establish the Street Food Institute - a non-profit organization designed to help budding culinary entrepreneurs who wanted to get into the burgeoning food-truck community in the city.  

While David worked with young people teaching the basics from food prep to business plans, Heather was working toward her master's degree in social work through New Mexico Highlands University.  After getting  her master's, Heather joined Communities in Schools a non-profit organization which worked with at-risk students to help keep them in school and engaged.  

But the restaurant life was pulling at the Sellers.  And like a number of restaurants during and directly after the pandemic, an Italian restaurant in Santa Fe closed their doors.  David and Heather had been working on a new concept for a restaurant where they could have high quality sustainably-grown/locally-sourced foods that weren't going to be tough on the diner's wallet and would be inviting for all walks of life.  When the space that housed the former Il Piatto Italian restaurants in Santa Fe became available, the Sellers jumped at the chance to move back to New Mexico's capital city and open their conceptual dream restaurant - Horno.  

In Spanish, "horno" means oven.  Most ovens in Mexican and Southwestern cultures of days gone by were situated outside the home, usually in a courtyard where families would meet and have communal meals.  The Sellers wanted Horno to have that same family and community vibe where their motto - "Food for the People" - would be fitting for their restaurant.   

We made reservations for 7:30 that evening and we found the adobe-style structure along Marcy Street in downtown Santa Fe.  (see map)  We were lucky in that a car was pulling out just a few spots down the street from Horno.  We were a few minutes early when we walked up to the hostess stand.  She said our table was ready (a nice change from restaurants who want you to spend time at the bar while they "prep" your table between seatings) and she took us into the small of the two dining rooms at Horno.  This dining space had a small bar with about 10 4-seat tables in the room.  

Our server that evening was a guy by the name of Edward.  Edward turned out to be a wealth of information on everything New Mexico. (More on that later on.)   He gave us the specials going on that evening and then asked for our drink order.  I ordered an Ex Novo IPA from Corrales, NM, a suburb of Albuquerque.  My wife got the fresh-squeezed red grapefruit paloma.  She likes palomas, but the red grapefruit they used in this one was a little too strong of a taste for her.  Nonetheless, she ended up drinking it down.  

Looking through the seasonal menu from Horno, there were a handful of farm-to-fork organically-raised Southeast Asian and Italian cuisine-inspired items to choose from.   From time-to-time David Sellers also features his award-winning green chile cheeseburger on the menu, a two-time winner of the best green chile burger in the state of New Mexico.  

Horno also has a pretty extensive wine list, all of which is curated by David Sellers.  We were both leaning toward seafood items from the menu, so I ordered up a bottle of the 2021 Feudi di San Gregorio Falanghina from Italy.  It was an easy-drinking white wine that had a full-bodied texture.  It went extremely well with what we ordered that evening.  

My wife started out with the roasted gold beet salad.  It came with fresh greens, sliced avocados, and was topped with a pumpkin seed piñon granola and a dill vinaigrette dressing.  She said the taste of her salad was "amazing".  She offered me a bite of her salad, but I was too busy concentrating on my appetizer. 

I got the tuna tartare on a risotto cake.  The tuna tartare was mixed with sturia caviar, chive butter and arugula, and finished off with a lemon/lime reduction.  This was simply unbelievable.  The risotto cake was deep fried with a crunchy outer shell that came apart very easily with my fork.  It was one of the more incredible things I've ever eaten.  

I could have really stopped with just the tuna tartare with the risotto cake, it was so scrumptious and rich that I didn't know if anything else I would have had that evening would have been able to top that dish.  But I found something pretty close in the seafood with squid ink capellini pasta.  This was a heavenly meal in itself.  It featured chunks of seafood mixed with chopped crab meat with dark green - nearly black - squid ink-infused capellini noodles.  It was topped with a butter cream sauce that was to absolutely die for.  In fact, they had slices of focaccia brought with the meals and after I cleared my plate of the pasta and seafood, I used a couple of the focaccia slices to sponge up the sauce.  It was outrageously great all around.  

My wife got the seafood special that evening - pink grouper fresh-caught off the coast of Baja California.  It came with a roasted corn succotash with roasted herbed tomatoes.  The pink grouper sat on a risotto cake similar to the one I had with the tuna tartare.  There was also a beurre blanc (white cream butter) sauce on the base of the plate.  

From the first bite, my wife was in epicurean heaven.  "This is one of the best things I've ever had in my life," she said after three or four bites.  Thankfully she offered me a bit as I gave her a bite of my seafood pasta.  Once again, she had picked the better of the two meals.  And that's not to say that my seafood pasta was bad - far from it.  But the pink grouper with the roasted succotash and tomatoes on a risotto cake with the beurre blanc sauce was absolutely heavenly.

My wife was worried that she wouldn't be able to eat the whole meal because it was very rich, but she surprised herself by pretty much finishing everything on her plate.  She even sopped up some of the beurre blanc sauce with the focaccia bread we had on the table.  After she threw in the towel, she sat back in her seat, took a drink from her wine glass and started to chuckle.  "That meal was something else," she said with a bit of a laugh.  

I didn't expect that we'd want any dessert, but Edward brought out the dessert menu for us to look over.  And all it took was a quick glance at one of the items - the blueberry "pop-tart" topped with vanilla ice cream with a blueberry compote and finished with powdered sugar.  This, too, was spectacular on its own.  Even though we were both full, the blueberry "pop-tart" with the vanilla ice cream was just too good to pass up.  

As we were savoring our dinner over a final glass of wine, Edward came over to check on us.  Most of the other patrons had finished their meals and moved on in the night, so my wife engaged Edward in conversation.  We found out that Edward first came to New Mexico in his teens on a boy scout retreat.  "I wanted to get back here in the worst way," he told us.  "So, I came back to go to college in Albuquerque."  

Edward told us that he was a history major with an emphasis on New Mexican history.  For 21 years, he was a fly fishing guide who moonlighted as a tour guide for area historical sites.  He's worked off and on as a waiter during the winter months which started during his years at the University of New Mexico and, as he put it, "I'm blessed to be married to a woman who has a good job with the state of New Mexico."  He said that most people who live in Santa Fe are working for three different entities - the state, tourism and hospitality (hotels, restaurants), or film production as the are a number of film and video studios in the immediate area around Santa Fe.   

As I said, Edward turned out to be a wealth of information about places to visit, things to see, and roads to take in and around Sante Fe, Chimayo, Taos and down toward Albuquerque.  When we told him that we were going back to Albuquerque for a few days, he said, "Oh, wait!  Let me get the chef.  He knows a lot of great restaurants to eat at in Albuquerque."  

Moments later, David Sellers emerged from the kitchen.  An affable man with a shock of silver hair, Sellers was appreciative of our praise for the meals we just enjoyed and he gave us a handful of restaurants in the Albuquerque to check out while we were there.  We did check a couple of them out - mainly farm-to-fork restaurants similar to Horno - but they were also a bit out of our price range of what we wanted to pay for a meal.  

I really can't say enough about our meal at Horno.  Everything from the food to the service to the comfortable atmosphere in the restaurant made it a top-notch experience.  Edward was a great server and a cool guy with a lot of great information about Santa Fe and other places nearby.  The tuna tartare appetizer that I started out with would have been a great item for a main entree, but the seafood and squid ink capellini was an outstanding dish.  My wife absolutely loved her fresh-caught pink grouper with the roasted corn succotash and the roasted tomatoes on a risotto cake with the beurre blanc sauce.  And the blueberry "pop-tart" topped with vanilla ice cream with a fresh blueberry compote was a great way to end the meal.  There's a lot of great restaurants in Santa Fe, but it would be my recommendation that Horno is at - or close to - the top of your list of restaurants to try if you get to New Mexico's capital city.  

Second Street Brewery - Santa Fe, NM

While exploring Santa Fe, we started off the day with a big breakfast.  I wasn't all that hungry by mid-afternoon, but my wife thought she needed something to eat.  We started to look up brew pubs in the area and one that we had noticed a day earlier in the Railyard Arts and Entertainment District near downtown Santa Fe.  We took off to check out the Second Street Brewery.  

In 1995, Rod Tweet was just out of brewing school in California and looking for an opportunity to work for a start-up brewery.  He already had his degree in engineering from the Oregon Institute of Technology and dabbled as a D.J. at the campus radio station.  But he decided to enroll at the American Brewers Guild in California to learn how to brew beer.  While he was in the apprenticeship program at a brewery in Seattle, Tweet got the call from the-then owner of the brewery to come to work for him.  

When Tweet showed up in early 1996 to work, he found a brewery that was literally under construction in a building on Second Street in Santa Fe.  Starting the brewery from scratch as the head brewer was exactly what Tweet was looking to do.  By August of that year, Second Street Brewery opened - the first in the city of Santa Fe.  

By 2000, the original owner wanted to get out of the business and Tweet stepped in to buy the brewery.  In 2010, Tweet opened the second Second Street Brewery location in the Railyard district.  A third location on Rufina Street in Santa Fe opened in 2017 basically doubling their brewing capacity.  

Pictured right - Rod Tweet.  Picture courtesy Edible New Mexico magazine. 

In 2022, the 20-year lease on the Second Street location ran out and Tweet decided not to renew it.  That location closed in the summer of last year.  However, my GPS still showed it was there.  We went there first only to find that the location was closed.  We then high-tailed it toward Santa Fe's downtown to go to the Railyard location.  

Parking is a little crazy around the Railyard.  I didn't know that there was a parking garage and a lot about a block and a half away, but I found some paid parking in a spot on Chili Line Lane near the brewery. (see map)

The Santa Fe Railyard district dates back to 1880 when the depot opened at the terminus of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe rail line.  The railroad brought thousands of people to Santa Fe to either seek their fortune or to vacation in the clean New Mexico air.  The site remained a central hub of travel to and from Santa Fe until the 1950's.  

With highways replacing railroads as the preferred means of transportation in the 1950's, activity at the railyard began to diminish.  By the mid-1980's, the area around the railyard had become blighted and an initiative came about to redevelop the area into arts & entertainment, shopping and restaurant spaces.  It took nearly 20 years for plans, approvals, financials, and construction before the Railyard District opened in September of 2008.  Second Street Brewing Company opened their location at the Railyard two years later. 

Inside Second Street Brewing we found a wide open area with a bar up front and heavy duty wood-top tables spread around the dining area.  The decor was decidedly modern industrial and there was a small patio area in the front.  The music playing in the background was mainly 70's and 80's classic rock.  

Our server was a man by the name of Dennis, a friendly guy who dropped off a couple menus for us to look over.  They had about a dozen of their beers on tap and we tried couple.  I tried the Kolsch, the Second Street American IPA, and the Sloppy Sloth Hazy New England IPA.  While all three were good, I went with the hazy IPA.  My wife was intrigued by the 2920 IPA which said it was a "gluten-removed" beer.  

When she asked Dennis what the difference was between "gluten-free" and "gluten-removed", Dennis quickly answered saying that gluten-free beer is using grains with no gluten in them from the start, while gluten-removed beer starts with hops and grains with gluten, then removed during the brewing process.  He asked if my wife was gluten-intolerant and she told him she was not.  "That's good," he said.  "If you do have celiac disease you can't always count on a 'gluten-removed' beer as being fully removed of gluten.  But, honestly, I don't think we've ever had a problem in the time I've worked here."  

As we were just looking for a mid-afternoon snack to keep us going up to dinner that evening, I really didn't want much of anything.  My wife needed food more than me - she needs three square meals a day while I can go all day on one meal if I can.  But while on vacation, I'll do breakfast and an occasional lunch with my wife in addition to a nice dinner.  

They had a green chile stew on the menu, but by that point in time I was pretty burnt out on green chile stew or green chili sauce.  We saw the chicken wings on the menu, but they were pretty expensive - $14 for 6 large wings.  My wife mentioned the roasted turkey wrap, but I don't care for turkey all that much.   We noticed some guys at a table near us were all getting burgers - and they looked really good - but decided that was going to be too much and possibly lay on the stomach.

We finally did find something on the menu that we figured we could share - the grilled fish tacos.  It was on the appetizers part of the menu and we had a choice between chicken, beef, grilled cod, or sautéed portobello mushroom strips.  Second Street Brewery gets their tortilla shells locally from a small Mexican restaurant Alicia's Tortilleria.  The fish tacos came with a mixed cabbage slaw and were topped with pico de gallo and an avocado-flavored sour cream.  

The tacos were certainly spot-hitters for us both.  After a large breakfast just a few hours before, they were light, full of flavor, and went very well with the beers we were having.  One taco each was just enough for us.  

We never did make it back to Second Street Brewery for at least one more beer, but I thought the Sloppy Sloth hazy IPA was pretty damned good.  The grilled cod tacos were also very good and we had great service from Dennis.  Second Street Brewery was a great place to hang for an hour or so on a warm Santa Fe day and I'm sort of sorry that we never made it back.  

Turquoise Trail Scenic Byway - Santa Fe to Albuquerque, NM

Last year during our trip to New Mexico, we were told by a local in Santa Fe that if we weren't in any hurry to get down to Albuquerque that we should skip going back on Interstate 25, but head down to Albuquerque on New Mexico State Highway 14 - the Turquoise Trail Scenic Byway.  We were told there were lots of little towns along the way, a very good brewpub and a lot of great views.  After checking out of our hotel in Santa Fe, we found that the road running past our hotel eventually turned into State Highway 14 just outside of Santa Fe.  

The Turquoise Trail is about a 60 mile long road that goes between Santa Fe and Tijeras, NM just east of Albuquerque.  It runs through small towns and villages such as Los Cerillos, Madrid, San Pedro and Sandia Park, many of which are artist communities.  

But what you don't necessarily see is the history behind the Turquoise Trail - the mines and now-ghost towns that were in place in the 18th and 19th centuries.  The ghost town of Golden, just north of San Pedro along State Highway 14, was the site of the first gold rush west of the Mississippi in the mid-1820's.  Up the road in Los Cerillos, gold was discovered in the 1870's and the area boomed with prospectors and commerce. 

But turquoise is the main precious mineral that has been mined in the region for hundreds of years. Native Pueblo Indians mined turquoise stones in the Cerillos Hills and Spanish conquistadors sent turquoise back to Spain for crown jewels.  Archeologists discovered over 50,000 pieces of turquoise that had been buried in a canyon north and west of Albuquerque.  Mayan ruins in far away Honduras have been found to contain turquoise stones that were mined in the Cerillos Hills just north of present day Madrid, NM.  (Madrid is pronounced the same way as the town in Iowa - MAD-rid.)  In addition to gold and turquoise, mines in the area produced zinc, lead, silver and copper.  

Heading south and east out of Santa Fe, there is a brew pub - Beer Creek Brewing Company - that we were told by a local in Santa Fe to stop at.  (See map)  Actually, we drove past it, realized that we passed it, then turned around down the road and went back.  Established in 2018 by friends who had a mutual interest in home brewing, Beer Creek Brewing Company got its name from the small creek that benefitted from the run-off of beer during the brewing process near the home of one of the founders.  Housed in a rustic stone building that has been used in film and television productions over the years, Beer Creek (known as BCBC or BC-squared by locals) offers a number of beers brewed on premises and also offers pizzas, sandwiches, pasta dishes and appetizers.  

Walking inside Beer Creek Brewing is like walking back into the old west.  The main bar area is on the left as you walk in.  The L-shaped bar was situated in a corner and had a wooden facade and metal stools.  Exposed wooden beams with faux candle lamps on a circular wagon wheel hung from the ceiling.  The dark wood walls definitely gave it a western feel.   

The rooms off the bar area were small.  The centerpiece of the room next to the bar area was an old stone fireplace with a number of tables nearby.  About the only thing that sort of looked out of place in the bar and the fireplace room were the flat screen televisions that hung on the walls.  

The rooms were cozy, but brightened by LED lights.  A couple of the rooms looked like they had recently been renovated with newer wood floors and support beams.  Pictures of the building from years ago hung on the wall of one of the small rooms.  
 
The inside bar was actually closed, but the outside bar was open.  The bar was part of a large outdoor patio that was situated under a number of trees that canopied the patio.  Once again, it was a hot day in New Mexico, but the air was dry and it was pleasant to sit outside.  The adobe-walled patio featured a large outdoor fireplace, but it certainly wasn't need that day.  

My wife and I ordered up a couple beers - I got the IP-AYY India Pale Ale and my wife got the Tres Amigo pale ale.  The beers at Beer Creek Brewing all feature locally grown hops and grains.  The IP-AYY was a bit more strong and hoppy than the Tres Amigo.  And sitting out on the patio having beers in the mid-day dry heat was a great experience.

The area around Beer Creek Brewing Company features a handful of studio sites where movies and television shows were shot.  We were told during our visit that the three largest employers in the Santa Fe area are the state of New Mexico, the hospitality industry (hotels, restaurants, tourism), and the film and television industry.  A couple guys seated at the table next to us were talking about the work they were doing at one of the studios nearby.  My wife bought me a book while we were in Albuquerque - "A Guide to New Mexico Film Locations" by Jason Strykowski - that goes into details of where some famous movies and television programs were filmed across the state.  Films such as Easy Rider, Crazy Heart, Hang 'Em High, and 3:10 to Yuma were filmed at various sites around the state, and the hit television programs - Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul - were filmed in and around Albuquerque.  

After finishing up at Beer Creek Brewing, we made our way down the road to the small village of Los Cerillos, just off Highway 14.  The town was once considered as the site for the state capitol building in New Mexico as it was the epicenter of turquoise, gold and lead deposits.  Dozens of mines were in the area for years making Los Cerillos a boom town in the mid-to-late 1800's.  Today, it's a sleepy tourist town where a number of television programs and movies have been shot over the years including Young Guns, We're the Millers, and Roswell - The Final Verdict.      

While we were driving around the small town, we ended up going down a side road and running into the Casa Grande Trading Post which also had a petting zoo and a turquoise mining museum.  My wife wanted to go in and take a look at what it was all about.  

The place was a combination rock shop/gift shop/antique store/tourist trap.  I remarked that it was sort of like a place the Griswold family would stop at on their way to Wally World in the "Vacation" movie.  Todd Brown and his wife Patricia run the establishment and feature different types of mineral rocks that are mined in the Cerillos Mining District located just north of the town.  Actually, my wife was sort of enamored with the different turquoise stones they had there.  While she looked at the turquoise, I poked my head back into the mining museum they had in the back of the place.  I'm not that big into geology to want to see the tools and contraptions they used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to extract the minerals out of the mines in the area.  My wife ended up buying a couple pieces of turquoise and she also bought me a colorful New Mexico "Chile Capital of the World" license plate.    

Just down the road from Los Cerillos was the small town of Madrid, NM.  Art galleries, boutiques, small restaurants and other touristy businesses lined Highway 14 as we drove slowly through the town.  "Do you wanna stop," I asked as we slowed down for a turning car.  

"No," my wife immediately said.  "Let's get going down the road."  

And that was fine with me as I found the best part of the drive on the Turquoise Trail to be the scenery.  The rolling hills and high plains dotted with sage bushes, the purple mountains off in the distance, and the brilliant blue sky allowed for many vistas along the road.  There were a handful of turnout areas that allowed us to stop and take in the views.  To me, that was the best part of traveling the Turquoise Trail. 

We took many scenic roads while we were in New Mexico, but the Turquoise Trail almost seemed geared for the tourists.  While there were some places to stop along the way - the Beer Creek Brewing Company being one - the attraction of the route was the beautiful scenery that stretched from Santa Fe all the way down to just east of Albuquerque.  If you're traveling between the two cities and have some time to kill, the Turquoise Trail is a nice little diversion. 

Tia Sophia's - Santa Fe, NM

One of the places that friends had suggested we visit during our time in Santa Fe was a breakfast/lunch place that was well-known amongst the locals and tourists for their great food and their history.   This restaurant may be the birthplace of the smothered burrito and is famous for their red and green chile sauces - even getting profiled on a national TV news program.  This is our visit to Tia Sophia's in downtown Santa Fe.  

The legacy of Tia Sophia's dates back to the 1930's when Tony and Sophia Maryol immigrated from the Greek island of Lesbos.  Tony had relatives who ran a small cafe in Santa Fe and they eventually started out there.  In the 1940's, Tony and Sophia moved to Albuquerque and ran a diner - Central Café - in the Atrisco neighborhood.  Since many of their neighbors were Hispanic, Sophia learned how to make the New Mexican-native dishes and started to serve them in their diner.  Sophia continued to run the restaurant into the early 70's when she retired.  

Tony and Sophia had 6 kids and each one of them worked in the restaurant at one time or another.  Oldest sister Georgia moved to Santa Fe about the time the family diner in Albuquerque closed up and eventually bought a down-trodden restaurant in downtown Santa Fe.  Georgia's next oldest sibling, her brother Jim had begun to work at the family's restaurant in Albuquerque at the age of six and ended up following his sister to Santa Fe not long after she moved there.  

With his wife Ann, Jim Maryol found a restaurant spot not too far from his sisters on San Francisco Street in downtown Santa Fe.  Hoping to carry on the tradition of the foods his mother learned from their neighbors in the Atrisco barrio in Albuquerque, he used many of the recipes and came up with a few other ones.  In 1975, Jim and Ann Maryol opened Tia Sophia's - Aunt Sophia's - as a homage to his mother's cooking.  

Years later, Tia Sophia's moved across and down San Francisco Street to a larger space that they still use today.  But it was a couple items served on their menu and their homemade chile sauces that garnered Tia Sophia's the attention of food enthusiasts long before there was such a thing.  

When Jim Maryol was growing up in Albuquerque, he noticed some of the kids in his neighborhood taking a small tortilla shell, putting chorizo, scrambled eggs and potatoes on the tortilla, then rolling it up and walking to school eating it on the way.  Jim Maryol took that idea and begun to sell breakfast burritos at Tia Sophia's from Day 1.  Maryol was credited with being the first to offer breakfast burritos at his restaurant, but had to stop people short from saying he was the one who came up with breakfast burritos as he discovered them some 20 years earlier in his old neighborhood in Albuquerque.  

But one thing a lot of people credit Jim Maryol for is the smothered burrito.  He would take a large breakfast burrito and ladle either their house-made green chile or red chile sauces on top.  Some people would like both sauces put on the burrito and waitress Martha Rotunno, who started at Tia Sophia's the first day it opened in 1975, coined the term "Christmas-style" for those who wanted their burritos - or any dish served with chile sauce - with both the green and red sauces.  

"Christmas-style" chile caught on in Santa Fe and elsewhere across the southwest.  But Tia Sophia's is widely regarded as the first to serve it that way.  Their notoriety caught the attention of the food and travel networks and was also featured on a CBS Sunday Morning segment a year ago last December around the holiday season which featured Nick Maryol, Jim and Ann's son who took over the restaurant about 17 years ago.  

(In the segment that you can see by clicking on the link, Nick Maryol says that it "rankles" him that people call it a sauce.  I guess I don't know what to call it.  A "gravy"?  A "juice"?  It's certainly not a salsa - or maybe it is. I don't know what you would classify it if you don't call it a sauce.) 

We were somewhat lucky when we pulled up in front of Tia Sophia's located at 210 W. San Francisco St., an east-bound one-way street in downtown Santa Fe.  (see map)  A vehicle just up the street was pulling out of a parallel parking spot and we immediately jumped in the vacant spot.  

On the outside of the adobe building was a historical plaque which said in the building Tia Sophia's is part of was once a jail that housed William Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid.  After Bonney was captured, he was held in the basement of the building from late December 1880 until he was moved to another jail in early April of 1881 for his trial.  Bonney was then found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang.  After he was moved to another prison to await his execution, Bonney escaped and was later killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, NM later that summer.  I remarked that they probably should have just kept him in the jail in Santa Fe in the first place.  

There was a small crowd waiting out in front of the restaurant when we got there.  We were told at the stand just inside the door it may be a bit of a wait, but then a lady came up and said that they had a booth for two that suddenly opened up.  It turned out that we were the only party of two that was waiting for a table at that time.  We were led to a small wooden booth along the wall and given a couple menus.  Festive turquoise dresses were tacked to the wall and multi-colored paper ornaments hung from the ceiling.  

In the back of the restaurant was an open space for dining with two skylights allowing some sunlight to brighten up the room.  More colorful decorations hung from the ceiling amidst the booths and tables in the back dining area.  

Next to the booth where we sat was a small wood-top counter.  About a half dozen high-backed metal chairs were lined up in front of the well-worn counter top.  Even though it doesn't look that way in this photo, the counter was a popular place while we were there.  

The breakfast items at Tia Sophia's included breakfast burritos with a choice of bacon, ham, sausage or bologna, omelets, cheese enchiladas, and Tia Sophia's handheld flour tortilla rolls with bacon, sausage or ham.  Pancakes, French toast, and cereal were also available for breakfast.  The Atrisco plate which featured two eggs any style with a bowl of green chile stew and a flour tortilla got my attention.  

Every day, Tia Sophia's has a special on the menu.  That day, the special was a Calebacita enchilada stuffed with squash, onions, corn and scrambled eggs and topped with Asadero cheese.  Pinto beans came on the side with the Calebacita.  And for good measure, my wife also wanted to try one of Tia Sophia's regular pancakes.   She had her choice of the green or red chile - or our server offered it up "Christmas-style".  My wife asked which of the two sauces were the more mild.  Our server said that the red sauce was more mild.  It turns out that both the green and red sauces had some kick to them, more than my wife expected.  But once she got used to the spiciness of the sauce, she thoroughly enjoyed her eggs and veggies enchilada.  And being somewhat of a pancake connoisseur, my wife also thought the pancake she had was very good.  It was a thin-style pancake that she likes so much.  But there was so much food in front of her, she wasn't able to finish it all.  I did have a couple bites of her pancake and it was pretty good. 

I went the simple route that day - primarily because I wasn't all that hungry - but the food at Tia Sophia's sounded great on the menu.  I got the ham and cheese omelet and had them put the green sauce on the top.  It was a simple omelet, nothing special, but the green sauce they have at Tia Sophia's was outstanding.  It did have a bit of a spicy bite, but it wasn't anything that I thought was all that overpowering.  A side of hash browns - New Mexican-style - came on the side.  I was able to finish all of the omelet and two or three bites of the hash browns.  Looking back, I wish I would have gotten the Atrisco breakfast with the eggs and a bowl of green chile stew.  But the omelet was fine for what it was. 

People were coming and going the whole time we were in Tia Sophia's.  A larger group of people had congregated outside the restaurant waiting for a table by the time we left.   We both thought it was fine, but not something that we would wait in line for if we were to go.  As burnt out that we were on the green chile sauces at that point of our vacation, I have to say the green chile sauce at Tia Sophia's was very good.  And we did get to visit and experience a somewhat famous restaurant.  Sure, I'd recommend giving Tia Sophia's a try for an authentic New Mexican-style breakfast.  But it wouldn't be on the top of my list to go back to if or when we get back to Santa Fe. 

The Pantry - Santa Fe, NM

My wife insists on three meals a day and I usually go along with her on breakfast jaunts while we're on vacation.  Scouting out a few places before we were in Santa Fe, one place seemed to jump out in terms of popularity from all the others.  It was a restaurant called The Pantry that had been around since 1948.  A place that has been open for 75 years, well, I just had to check it out.  

Just after World War II while living in the Midwest, Wanda Myers told her brother George about the endless opportunities around Santa Fe.  Wanda was friendly with some contractors who had helped build Los Alamos for the U.S. Government in the early 40's and they told her that Santa Fe was the land of opportunity for post-World War veterans.  The contractors told Wanda that while there were a lot of New Mexican-style restaurants in the area, there weren't many places that served American-style cuisine.  

George Myers had learned to cook during a stint with the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Great Depression-era work relief program that was in place from 1933 to 1942 for unemployed single men in the age group of 17 to 28.  Wanda convinced George to move to New Mexico in 1947 to set up a restaurant that would serve American classic foods.  

Along with George's wife Delores, Wanda and George moved to New Mexico in 1947 and scouted for places to build a restaurant.  George picked out a spot along what was known as the "Sante Fe Loop" of the storied Highway 66 just outside of the-then Santa Fe city limits.  George built the restaurant by hand and included an apartment in the rear of the place for him and his wife.  With Wanda's help, The Pantry opened in 1948.  Not long after The Pantry opened,  Wanda decided to do something else with her life and left her brother and sister-in-law carry on without her.  

By the mid-50's, the pace of business was wearing on George Myers.  He decided to lease out the restaurant in 1955 to George and Franny Bernsten who expanded the restaurant after George and Delores moved out of their apartment.  The Bernstens ran the restaurant for a few years before giving up the lease.  George and Delores continued to own the restaurant and leased it out a few more times before their son Max took over as the co-owner of the place in 1998.  Max had a partner in former restauranteur Stan Singley.  

Stan Singley was the long time manager of the local Luby's restaurant in Santa Fe.  Stan eventually retired in 1993 and was involved with real estate in and around the greater Santa Fe area for the next five years.  Max Myers worked at the restaurant as a young man, but got into the banking industry at an early age eventually becoming the president of Century Bank In Santa Fe.  With his parents getting on in age and looking to get completely out of the business, Max convinced his friend Stan Singley to join him in the restaurant.  

In 2010 Singley's son Mike joined his father and Max Myers in the business.  Mike Singley had just graduated from the (now closed) Le Cordon Blue culinary school in Scottsdale, AZ and was brought in as an apprentice to learn the ropes and eventually take over the restaurant's shares from his father.  Mike Singley continues to run The Pantry, as well as two spin-offs of the original restaurant - Pantry Dos which opened in 2019, and Pantry Rio which opened in 2020.  

We had passed The Pantry a number of times during our trips between our hotel on the southwest side of Santa Fe and to the downtown area along Cerrillos Road.  (see map)  We pulled into the parking lot next to the adobe structure with bright blue awnings on the front around 9:30 on another beautiful New Mexico morning.  There were a lot of cars in the lot and we figured that we would need to wait for a table when we went in.  

But little did we know that the place was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside.  As you come in the front entrance, there's a dining area off to the side.  Artwork from local artists hung from the walls - similar to many other restaurants we went to during our time in Santa Fe.  The Pantry was certainly a vibrant place that morning.  

There was a counter area that was part of the original Pantry when it opened in 1948.  The kitchen was behind the counter and featured the old-style serving window that was a beehive of activity with the waitstaff picking up orders to take to tables.  60's and 70's classic rock music was playing in the background in the restaurant.  My wife remarked that it seemed like most of the places were in during our trip to Santa Fe were playing classic rock music for their background music.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  

We thought we'd have to wait as there wasn't any room in the dining room or at the counter.  But a lady came up and asked how many there were in our group.  When we told her two, she grabbed a couple menus from the holder and said, "Follow me!"  She took us to another room behind the kitchen area - the original residence of George and Delores Myers that had been turned into a larger dining area in the 50's.  The original wood beams hung from the ceiling over the heavy-duty wooden tables and chairs in the dining room.  More art work was hung on the walls and a large mural of an old map of the region around Santa Fe hung on the far wall of the restaurant.  Later on, I noticed that there was a little bar area off to the side - The Pantry did offer alcoholic beverages.  But I knew we were going to have a busy day of driving and sightseeing that I didn't want to start of the partying too early with a bloody mary as an eye-opener.  

Our server that day was a lady by the name of Josephine.  She was pleasant and gave us a few moments to run through the menu after she brought us both a glass of orange juice to start out.  While The Pantry was touted as a breakfast spot by many of the locals, they also featured salads, burgers and sandwiches, as well as traditional New Mexican cuisine such as Carne Adovada (slow-cooked pork in a chile sauce), stuffed sopaipillas, and chile rellenos.  They also featured comfort food items on the menu including a house-recipe meat loaf, slow-cooked beef brisket, and and open-faced hot turkey sandwich.  

But we wanted breakfast and they had a number of traditional breakfast items including pancakes, French toast, and a house-made corned beef hash.  The stuffed French toast sounded interesting as it was coated in corn flakes, then stuffed with cream cheese, blueberries and strawberries.  However, a lot of the items on the breakfast part of the menu had a decided New Mexican twist.  There was an omelet stuffed with a chili relleno, the Lindo's scramble featured scrambled eggs with roasted chile peppers, avocado and spinach, and they had a large breakfast burrito like many of the other places we went to for breakfast around the Santa Fe area.  

When Josephine came back to take our order, my wife was ready.  She got the smashed avocado toast seasoned with sea salt.  2 eggs made-to-order came on the side with some Pantry potatoes.  My wife got scrambled eggs as her choice.  Once again, the potatoes were the New Mexican-style of fried potatoes that we were trying to figure out what they did to them.  We guessed they rolled them in flour or corn meal and added some ground chile pepper to them, then flat-grill fry them.  My wife remarked that the avocado toast would have been more than enough for her as it was a large slice of multi-grain toasted bread with a thick layer of avocado on top.  She wasn't able to eat all that was on her plate, but she made a serious dent in all three items.  

I ended up getting the 3-egg cheese omelet with sausage, mushrooms and chopped green chile peppers added.  It, too, came with the Pantry potatoes on the side.  When Josephine brought the omelet out, she looked at it and said, "Oh, wait.  I think I got the wrong plate for you."  She took it back and I waited.  Moments later, she came back and said, "Oh, no.  I had the right plate all along."  She said that she thought she had a Durango omelet - ham, mushrooms, green onions, sour cream and cheese.  "What you ordered looks similar to a Durango omelet," Josephine said as she put the plate down in front of me.  "I had to go make sure that yours was what you ordered."  

Indeed, it was.  I asked Josephine for some Cholula and she brought over a new bottle for me to use.  The omelet was huge as were the portion of potatoes on the side.  But the combination of the sausage, mushrooms, green chile peppers and cheese mixed in the omelet with the outstanding green chile sauce on top was scrumptious.  I had a few bites of the potatoes with some Cholula poured on them.  In my mind, the jury was still out on New Mexican-style potatoes.  I don't eat potatoes all that much and while these were good, they didn't consume me to the point where I missed them when we went back home.  

After our visit, it was easy to see why The Pantry is one of the top breakfast places in Santa Fe.  Actually, many of the later day items on their menu made it sound like their food was pretty damned good all day long.  The portions were generous and what my wife and I both had was very tasty and filling.  I thought I would get sick of having New Mexican-style breakfasts while we were in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, but I couldn't quit ordering something during breakfast with a green chile sauce.  And the breakfast at The Pantry was one of the best we had during our visit to New Mexico.

The License Plates of New Mexico

As much as I travel by car, I see a lot of license plates from various states around the country.  On long trips around the Midwest to help break up the monotony, I used to play a game - License Plate Bingo - where I would check off all the states license plates I would see on the roadways, especially in the summertime.  I would occasionally see cars sporting plates from Alaska and Hawaii.  (A few years ago, there was a car with Hawaii plates in the Quad Cities for a couple three years.  Turned out it was a student at the Palmer School of Chiropractic who had his car shipped over to the mainland to use while he was in school.)  

But the ones that really stick out to me are the ones that I see from New Mexico - especially my all-time favorite plate that I'll talk about in a bit.  We saw 'em all during our trip to New Mexico earlier this year.  

A lot of states feature drab-colored or classic-style license plates.  The fonts and background colors of Indiana's current plates look so much like the Iowa plates that it's tough to tell the difference.  Some states have so much clutter on their plates that it's difficult to figure out what state they're from.  

Over the past few years the state of Iowa has suddenly figured out that people don't want silos and buildings on their plates and they have issued a "Blackout Plate" consisting of white letters and numbers on a black background.  It looks great on my car and on my wife's car - both are white - and it looks good on black or grey cars.  

The state of Iowa has 29 commemorative plates for various colleges and universities around the state.   A few years ago, a number of license plate "hackers" thought the Dordt University license plates looked pretty nice on black or white cars.  Dordt's uniform colors are predominantly black and white with gold trim and enterprising people would hide the "Dordt University" with a license plate frame and would put black tape over the "Defenders".  Hiding any lettering on a license plate is against the law in Iowa, but the state saw how popular the white on black plates were.  

In 2019, Iowa passed legislation creating the "Blackout Plate".  For a one-time $60 fee, people could get the black and white plates. The first week they were available to all 99 counties, they sold out.   In all, the state has issued nearly 490,000 "Blackout" license plates generating nearly $26 million in voluntary tax revenue for the state.  It appears that other states are starting to catch on to the idea.  Utah has now made a "Blackout" plate available and there is a wait of nearly 6 to 8 weeks to get the tags.  

And that's kind of interesting because Utah's regular issue license plates are one of the more colorful ones I've seen.  It features a picture of Delicate Arch from the Arches National Park on the background of the plate.   North Dakota's, South Dakota's and Nevada's license plates also feature colorful scenic backgrounds.  They definitely stand out color-wise even though it's difficult to make out what the pictures are when you're passing someone at 78 mph on the interstate.  

But the New Mexico plates have always stuck out - and it really doesn't have anything to do with background pictures or the fonts they use.  They're just, well, noticeable.  

Actually, New Mexico has three standard issue plates.  The two that are the most well-known are the red on yellow license plate, and the yellow on turquoise license plates.  Both feature the Zia sun symbol in the middle of the plates.  The Zia sun symbol represents the four main directions, the four seasons of the year, the four periods of each day (morning, noon, evening, and night), and the four seasons of life (childhood, youth, middle age, and old age). The center of the sun symbol stands for life itself.  New Mexico is also the only state that uses the "USA" as a tag after the state name to make sure that people don't mistake the plates for Mexican plates.  

The red on yellow plates were first introduced in 1958 and went through some variations over the years.  Since 1978, the red on yellow plates have been the primary license tags on vehicles in New Mexico.  

The yellow on turquoise plates were introduced in 2010 and were immediately named as the "Best New Plate" by the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association (yes, that is a real organization!).  It was the first time a New Mexico plate had been honored by the club which was founded in 1954.  

Because turquoise is the de facto "state color" of New Mexico, it was a no-brainer to issue plates in that color.  New Mexico's nickname "Land of Enchantment" is featured prominently on both license plates.

It turns out that New Mexico has a number of specialized plates.  New Mexico has SIXTY different plates to either choose from for people who are qualified to have them.  That has to be a nightmare for law enforcement.  But in a state where there are 2.1 million people living, I suppose there are enough different variations that allow that many different types of plates.  

The plate themes are very diverse - there are 10 license plates for 8 colleges and 2 junior colleges in the state.  There are specific license plates for residents of Santa Fe and Las Cruces.   The "Wildlife" plate features a roadrunner on it.  (We didn't see a roadrunner while we were there, much to my dismay.)  There are license plates that commemorate or honor Boy Scouts, bass fishing, Route 66, breast cancer awareness, pollinator protection, and retired fire fighters and state police.  (You can see all 60 vehicle and motorcycle plate styles for New Mexico by clicking here.)  

We saw a couple plates that I thought were somewhat interesting during our trip to New Mexico. There were plates that honored retired veterans from each of the branches of military service.  They also had disabled veteran plates as shown below left.  The veterans plates of gold on navy blue with an eagle on the side really stood out.  

Another plate that we saw from time to time was the Farm & Ranch Heritage tag that showed support for New Mexican farmers and ranchers.  What seemed to be most interesting in all of this - the vehicles that sported these plates were all high dollar SUV's or pick up trucks.  I especially got a kick out of seeing this one (above right) on a Mercedes GLA SUV.  

But the best license plate is also a standard issue plate that New Mexico first introduced in 2017.  This is my all-time favorite license plate - the "Chile Capital of the World" tag.  It features gold lettering on a black background with green and red chiles shown prominently on the side.  This was also awarded the "License Plate of the Year" the year it was issued by the ALPCA.  

I first saw this plate when my wife and I were in Colorado Springs in a hotel parking lot in August of 2018.  The plate just jumped out at me.  It immediately became my favorite license plate.  Each time I see one of the "chile" plates, I smile.  The color combinations of the red, green and gold just pop off the black background.  

I wanted to get a novelty "chile" plate while we were in New Mexico.  And while I don't like to go into the tourist trap places like they had in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Taos, I did stop to take a quick look around in some of them to see if they had novelty "chile" plates.  All efforts turned up futile, which, quite actually, was fine with me.

However, my wife and I were driving the backroads between Santa Fe and Albuquerque and we stopped into a "trading post/museum" (more of a tourist trap) in the small town of Los Cerillos.  There they had a few antiques and they also had license plates.  They had a "chile" license plate for sale, but they wanted $12 bucks for it.  I thought about it for a moment, had it in my hands, and thought, "No, I'll find a novelty plate somewhere in Albuquerque."  

But my wife was adamant.  "If you want this plate, I'll buy it for you."  I hemmed and hawed for a moment before she finally picked up the plate and took it to the front counter and bought it for me.  

I usually don't buy much of anything as far as trinkets or collectables on vacation, but this car license may be the best thing that I brought home from a vacation.  And I have my wife to thank for that.  

I have it proudly displayed in my office.  And I get a bit of a smile each time I glance at it.  

Fire & Hops - Sante Fe, NM

There's a time lag between visits to restaurants and the time they get posted on Road Tips.  I write them up in advance and have a program that allows me to schedule when they are published on the blog.  Over the years, it's happened four or five times where we've gone to a place and by the time I publish a post on the restaurant, it has gone out of business.  This is one of those times.  We had dinner one evening at this restaurant in Santa Fe and less than two weeks later they closed.  Since I had already written up the place on Road Tips and I figured that I just go ahead and share our experience while we were there.  

While in Santa Fe, one evening my wife and I had gone up to the Cross of the Martyrs on the former site of Fort Marcy to watch the sun set.  Afterward, we set out to find a bite to eat for dinner.  There was one place that wasn't too far away that I had my eye on since we first got to Santa Fe, a little bistro called Fire & Hops.  

Joel Coleman and Josh Johns met in 2010 while Coleman was the chef at a Japanese/Asian restaurant in Santa Fe, while Johns was managing Second Street Brewery.   The two hit it off and talked about opening a place of their own - a gastropub featuring interesting foods and interesting beers.  But when Coleman's restaurant closed unexpectedly, he moved to San Francisco to continue his culinary career while Johns stayed behind in Santa Fe.

Coleman was a native of Santa Fe and had years of culinary experience under his belt.  He first got into working at restaurants when he was going to high school on the island of Kauai in Hawaii, then moved back to the mainland to go to culinary school, followed by work at San Francisco area restaurants.  Coleman eventually settled back in Santa Fe and was the chef at Koi before it closed in 2011.  Coleman worked in restaurants and as a private chef until he moved back to Santa Fe in 2013.  

Pictured right - Joel Coleman and Josh Johns.  Photo courtesy Santa Fe New Mexican.

When Coleman came back to Santa Fe, he looked up Johns and their conversations about opening a bistro started up again.  They first found a small house on N. Guadalupe Street that had been built in 1907.  Transforming it into a restaurant took a bit of time and the business partners opened Fire & Hops in August of 2014.  Coleman ran the kitchen, while Johns took care of the bar and front of house.  

While the chef at Fire & Hops, Coleman became fascinated with gourmet ice cream.  In 2016, Coleman opened up a boutique ice cream parlor - La Lecheria - in Santa Fe.  At one point, Coleman had two La Lecheria locations and by 2022 he decided that he wanted to focus on quality ice cream than working in a kitchen like he had down his whole adult life.  Coleman sold his share in Fire & Hops to Johns later that year and stepped away.  In his absence, Johns reached out to local chef Austin "Gus" Emery to continue the vision Coleman and Johns set out for Fire & Hops when they opened in 2014.  

It was just after 8 p.m. when we pulled up to Fire & Hops just west of downtown Santa Fe.  (see map)  The only problem is that Guadalupe Street is a busy thoroughfare and there is no parking at Fire & Hops.  We drove around the place a couple times trying to find parking before we found some on street parking on Jefferson Street about a block away from Fire & Hops.  

Inside Fire & Hops, we found a couple small dining rooms with wooden beams across the ceiling.  Artwork from local artists along with posters hung on the walls.  The rooms were cozy and had hardwood flooring.    

The small bar area was off to the left when you walk in.  The wooden beams had coasters from different types of beers and breweries on display.  The bar area was hopping when we got in, but it was past closing time when I snapped this picture.   

We were met by a young lady - Angela - who also turned out to be our server that night.  We had the option of sitting inside or out on the small covered patio in the back.  It was a nice night and we decided to sit on the patio.  Angela gave us a couple menus to look over.  Fire & Hops has a rotating beer list of mainly local breweries to choose from.  I ended up getting a hazy IPA from the Ex Novo Brewing Company down the road in Corrales, NM, a suburb of Albuquerque.  My wife got a paloma, something that she had been on a kick with over the previous few weeks.  

Most of the food on the menu is locally sourced and changes due to availability.  It wasn't a large menu, but most of the things were sort of interesting.  Their roasted Brussels sprouts looked enticing to my wife as an appetizer, but I was sort of cringing at getting something like that as a starter.  And I even like roasted Brussels sprouts from time to time.  Actually, the smoked pork poutine looked better to me.  But I knew my wife would never go for that and I wouldn't want to have anything other than that if I ordered the poutine.  

One of the guys at the table next to us go the Fire & Hops burger - a house-ground burger with a choice of cheese and caramelized onions on a bakery-fresh bun.  The Cubano sandwich also got my attention, but I have to say that I will never find a Cuban sandwich as good as the ones I've had in Miami, so that was out of the question for me.  

In the end, I ordered the Kalua pork tacos.  Encased in soft flour torillas, the Kalua pork was topped with cabbage and pickled red onions.  The pork had a nice smoky and earthy flavor.  It wasn't heavy on the stomach and they were perfect for what I needed that evening.  

My wife went with the monthly sandwich special - the BBQ pork sandwich.  It was topped with a creamy cole slaw and served on a bakery-fresh bun made by the Chocolate Maven artisanal bakery in Santa Fe.  A side of Cajun fries came with the sandwich with a garlic aioli dip.  My wife offered some of the fries to me and I have to say they were somewhat spicy - and highly addictive.  She was more than happy with the sandwich and even though she doesn't like spicy foods like I do, she even admitted that the fries - when dipped in the garlic aioli - had a great taste.  

After dinner, the place had sort of cleared out - they close at 9 p.m. and we were sort of lolly-gagging around with our meal.  Angela didn't seem to be in any hurry to get us out of there and after she cleared our plates she came back with a dessert menu.  They had a fried blueberry pie topped with a house-made lemon sorbet with lemon creme drizzled on the plate.  Well, she had me at blueberry, but any time you can couple lemon with blueberry with me, I turn into a food slave.  And, oh man, was it all good!  It was so delicious and rich and delectable and succulent and- well, I don't want to drone on with other adjectives.  Let me just say that it didn't suck.

For just trying a place based on how it looked from the outside has served us well over the years and I thought that Fire & Hops looked interesting enough to give it a try.  And we weren't disappointed.  My Kalua pork tacos were very good and my wife really enjoyed her BBQ pork sandwich.  And we both loved the Cajun fries with the garlic aioli, as well as the fried blueberry pie with the lemon sorbet.   Angela was a great server and was more than patient with us as we took our time with a nice leisurely meal.  Fire & Hops is a quant little place and would be a great stop if you get to Santa Fe.  

(Update - We were there the end of August and less than week later Fire & Hops announced they were closing.  Josh Johns cited the ongoing problem of procuring help that a lot of restaurants seem to be going through after the pandemic, plus the growing cost of locally grown food, coupled with the lack of parking in the area.  Gus Emery was also scheduled to step away from the restaurant due to family concerns, so Johns felt it was time to just shut the whole operation down.  The last day was September 10.  That's a shame.  Fire & Hops was a great place to visit.)  

Maria's New Mexican Kitchen - Santa Fe, NM

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.   

Santa Fe, NM

During our trip to New Mexico, we spent a few days and nights in Santa Fe, the capital city of the state.  Santa Fe is not only the seat of government in the state, but it's also the center of the arts community in the state.  And not only is the arts community big in Santa Fe, but the entertainment industry is also large with dozens of production companies having offices and studios in the area.  Over the years, there has been a slew of television shows and movies that have been filmed in and around the Santa Fe area.  As we were told while we were there, the three largest employers in the area are either the state of New Mexico, the tourism industry, or the film industry.  We found that to be rather fascinating.  

We flew into Albuquerque and after a nice lunch there we drove up to Santa Fe, about an hour drive north and east of Albuquerque.  We stayed at the Doubletree in Santa Fe using up some Hilton Honors points that I'm starting to pile up again with my traveling resuming.  I wanted to stay at the Hilton in downtown Santa Fe, but they wanted too many points for our stay.  

The Doubletree wasn't bad, at all.  It was clean, comfortable, had a nice little bar, and the staff was more than accommodating. (Especially when it came to their famous cookies.)  Hilton has really stepped up their game with many of the Doubletree's I've stayed in over the past few years.  Years ago, it seemed like most Doubletree's were old tired properties that Hilton had taken over and popped the Doubletree brand on it.  But most - if not, all - of the Doubletree's I've stayed in over the past few years are very nice.  

As a Hilton Lifetime Diamond member, I can pick the room I want to stay in in advance at most properties through the Hilton app on my phone.  It was going to be a super blue full moon during our stay in Santa Fe, so I picked out an east facing room on the top floor with a walk-out deck so we would get a great view of the moon coming up over the mountains to the east.  However, when we went to check in and I informed the young lady at the front desk that I had already done an "e-check-in", she cheerfully told me that the hotel had upgraded us to a suite - on the OTHER side of the hotel.  And this room was on the "forested" side of the hotel.  It was a nice patio deck outside our room, but not much of a view, even from the top floor.  This is the view we had while we sat on the deck in our room.  While we enjoyed the late afternoon shade on the deck, we would have really rather had the basic king room on the other side.  Oh well...

My wife likes art and that was one of the main reasons why we wanted to go to Santa Fe.  Sante Fe has so many art galleries that it ranks No. 3 in the nation - behind New York and Los Angeles.  There are dozens - no, hundreds - of galleries, large and small all around Sante Fe.  But probably the most famous is the Georgia O'Keeffe Gallery/Museum in the heart of Santa Fe.  

Georgia O'Keeffe was a modernist artist in the early-to-mid 20th century who had to fight sexism within the art community before being accepted as the "Mother of the Modernist Movement".  O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1929 and spent many years on working vacations in Taos, Sante Fe and near the small town of Abiquiu.  After the death of her husband, O'Keeffe permanently moved to New Mexico in 1948 and settled into a house and studio she bought in Abiquiu, but continued to spend time in Taos and Santa Fe.  She passed away in Santa Fe in 1986 at the age of 98.  

The O'Keeffe museum is in a somewhat nondescript building that we had actually driven past a couple times before we realized it was even there.   We really didn't know what to expect in terms of artwork in the gallery as we read that it housed over 3000 pieces of her artwork.  But they probably showed just 10 to 15 percent of O'Keeffe's artwork they had on hand.  It was $20 per person to get in and we were able to get around the exhibit in a little less than 90 minutes as there were a number of wall cards detailing sequences in O'Keeffe's life which led to some of the paintings on display.  I have to say I had a bit of trepidation going in, but found it to be well worth the time and money spent.  

Probably the most famous area for galleries and studios in Santa Fe is Canyon Road.  Located east of downtown Santa Fe (see map), Canyon Road features over 80 galleries, studios and art designers on a narrow street that meanders for about a half mile.  We wandered into a few shops fully expecting to get hit on by the artists or gallery owners to buy something right then and there.  (As we've experienced in other places during our previous vacations.)  But we were pleasantly surprised that most of the people working in the galleries were informative about the artists and their works, but not pushy at all to make a sale.  It actually was a nice surprise to be able to wander around a gallery looking at art work without someone hovering over us trying to get us to buy something.

But the number of galleries and studios up and down Canyon Road were almost overwhelming.  We spent about an hour and a half walking Canyon Road and I'm sure we didn't hit even a quarter of the galleries.  It was interesting, but also somewhat mind-boggling.  

 

Since Santa Fe is the state capital, we had to satisfy my state capitol building fetish and visit the capitol grounds.  (By my count, I have now visited 20 state capitol buildings in my travels.) The state capitol in Santa Fe is a modern structure designed in the territorial revival style of architecture that you find in many of the newer buildings in New Mexico.  Finished and inaugurated in 1966, the capitol building is the only circular state capitol in the U.S.  

 

The main floor of the capitol building is another art gallery featuring artwork by New Mexican artists.  In fact, on the walls of the wings coming off the rotunda as well as the circular hallways with offices that encompass the state house of representative and the senate were filled with artwork.  We probably spent 45 minutes walking around looking at even more paintings and sculptures.  

The New Mexico state capitol is also one of 11 state capitol buildings in the U.S. without a dome.  However, there is a skylight on top of the rotunda that is designed to resemble a Native American basket weave.  From above, the building and grounds are designed to look like a Zia sun symbol - similar to the symbol that is on the New Mexico state flag.  

The old part of Santa Fe - The Plaza - is one of the more popular places in the city.  This is the oldest part of the city dating back to the early 1600's.  A number of shops, galleries and restaurants surround the Plaza.  On the north side of the Plaza is the Palace of the Governors, the first governmental building used by settlers in the early 17th century.  Today, it is the cornerstone of the New Mexico History Museum.  Its block long portal in front of the building is reserved for Native American residents to sell jewelry and crafts during the day.  

Some evenings the Plaza comes alive with free music on a stage across the street from the Palace of the Governors.  During the day, craft vendors and musicians busking under the shade trees helps keep the square vibrant.  

Because Santa Fe is one of the oldest settlements in the U.S., there are a lot of historical churches and buildings near the Plaza.  This is the San Miguel Chapel, the oldest church in the United States.  It was originally built in 1610, but was dismantled after Spanish Franciscan missionaries were expelled from the region by the sitting governor in 1640.  That governor was subsequently jailed and the missionaries came back to Santa Fe and reassembled the chapel.   

In 1680, the church was damaged during a revolt by the local natives to drive the Spaniards out of the area.  However, when the Spaniards returned to the area in 1692 they found the mission was mostly burned out, but salvageable.  It was rebuilt on the same foundations of the original church and has gone through numerous updates, renovations and shoring over the years.  An interesting dichotomy of old vs. new happened when we were there - the church was outfitted with solar panels and was in the process of becoming fully solar powered.  I lingered inside the church long enough to take the picture above right, but churches and I don't get along so well and as soon as I felt like I was going to catch on fire, I left the chapel.  

Just down an alley from the San Miguel Chapel was the De Vargas Street House - the sign out front said it was "The Oldest House In the U.S.A.".  Known to the locals as "The Old House", the sunbaked adobe was just off the terminus of the Santa Fe Trail, a trader's route that connected Santa Fe with Central Missouri in the early to late 1800's.  Although the date of construction is unknown, it's thought that the adobe was built sometime between 1610 and 1620.  

And it was a museum.  We didn't even venture inside as I thought it had to be somewhat of a tourist trap.  It was just an old adobe building where a second story had been put on top in the early 1920's.  I wasn't about to spend five minutes in the place seeing a bunch of old relics - even if it was free admission.  

But the scenery in and around Santa Fe can be breathtaking at times - especially at sunset.  (Here's a tip from Road Tips - talk up the servers at restaurants.  They usually know the best places to go, to do and to see in the area.)  We were told by one of the people at a restaurant where we were eating that a lot of locals head up to the Cross of the Martyrs to watch the sun set.  The Cross of the Martyrs commemorates the death of nearly 400 Spanish colonists and nearly 2 dozen Franciscan monks during a revolt by locals in 1680.  The original cross was a reinforced concrete structure that was dedicated in 1920.  In 1974, a steel replacement was placed on the former site of Fort Marcy overlooking the city.  (See map)  There are two parking lots near the outlook and ample parking on the street, if needed.  

We went up to see the sun set a couple times during our visit to Santa Fe.  At 7000 feet above sea level, the sky is a deep blue with little to no haze.  After we got home, we remarked at the complete difference in our hazy midwestern skies and the awesome azure hue in the skies in New Mexico.  

One evening, there was a large number of people on the site to watch the sun set in the west, and then wait for the super blue full moon that was scheduled to rise in the east over the mountains after the sun went down.  I have an application on my phone that shows the position of the moon, planets and stars at any given moment and I deduced that it would probably be 45 minutes before the moon would rise above the mountains east of Santa Fe.  It would have been nice to see, but we also knew that we wouldn't be eating dinner until around 9 p.m. - the closing time for many restaurants in downtown Santa Fe during the week.  

While we were in Santa Fe, we were eating at a restaurant one evening and we started to hear these amplified sounds of growls and guttural screams in the distance.  My wife asked our server, "What on earth is that noise?"  

"Oh, that's the rehearsal for Zozobra," she said casually.  

We had no idea what she was talking about, but as our time in Santa Fe went on, we found out that Zozobra was sort of a big deal - figuratively and literally.  After learning the history of the Zozobra celebration, we fully understood why people make pilgrimages to Santa Fe on the Friday before Labor Day each year. 

Zozobra is a 50-foot tall marionette made out of wood, wire and cotton cloth that is set on fire each Friday before Labor Day.  This was the 99th edition of Zozobra which started in 1924 when a local artist made the first Zozobra - then a 6-foot tall effigy - to ward off anguish, anxiety, concern or gloom, words that translate into "zozobra" in Spanish.  

I understand that people can bring paid-off mortgages, old police reports or tickets, divorce papers and written notes detailing bad things that have happened to individuals over the past year to an office in Santa Fe up to four months before the Zozobra celebration.  The collected paperwork is put inside the gown of the Zozobra marionette and then after a pre-celebration filled with pageantry, Zozobra is set afire to allow all the worries and problems people have given to put into Zozobra to go up in smoke.  

Pictured left - Zozobra burning in 2019.  Photo courtesy Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe.

It turned out that it's quite the deal - 50,000 people were slated to attend the Zozobra pageant on the day we were leaving to go to Albuquerque.  We were told that after two years of having no attendees for Zozobra due to the COVID 19 pandemic, 70,000 people showed up last year.  It overwhelmed local authorities to the point that they capped the attendance at 50,000 this year.  And I heard that all 50,000 tickets were snapped up months in advance.    

We had a few locals ask us if we were in town for Zozobra and we either said we didn't know what it was, or once we found out what it was, we said we weren't going.  "Good", or "That's smart", more than one local told us. "It's a zoo," one of our servers told us at a local restaurant the night before the celebration.  

Zozobra is so popular that a local television station shows the proceedings live.  (You can click here to see the broadcast.  If you want to cut to the chase, click ahead to the 23:00 minute mark as that's about the time they torch Zozobra and it goes up in flames.)  It's actually pretty neat with all fireworks and dancers beforehand, but once it goes up in smoke, it's pretty much over.  

We had a good time in Santa Fe.  I had a buddy who was there the week before we were, and he and I were comparing notes before we took off for New Mexico.  He said, "My wife is into the art and we were there for 5 days.  We pretty much saw everything we wanted to see in 3."  And that's sort of what we encountered.  A day and a half on an arts walk was almost overwhelming.  But it was certainly interesting.  We had some pretty good to great meals while we were there, people were friendly, and most importantly, the town was very clean and easy to get around.  It was also a nice starting point for some scenic drives into the mountainous deserts of the region.  Glad we went.  Would I like to go back?  Maybe, but I think there's other places I'd like to visit before heading back.  

New Mexico

We just came back from a vacation to New Mexico.   We wanted to go somewhere that we had never been to before and we discussed a couple three places before making a decision.  We had talked about New Orleans (even though I had been there over 20 years ago), but at this time of year in Louisiana the heat and humidity is brutal.  We talked about going to Charleston, SC.  When we went to Savannah, GA a few years back, we had planned on going up to Charleston for a couple days.  But we liked Savannah so much that we skipped Charleston.  However, we vowed to get there some day.  We were leaning toward heading to Charleston for this vacation.  

For some reason one evening not long ago, I started looking into going to New Mexico.  I had flown into Albuquerque a number of years ago on a Southwest Airlines flight, but I had never gotten off the plane as I was heading on to Dallas from Las Vegas.  So, technically I had been to New Mexico before, but never experienced the state.    

Picking New Mexico over Charleston turned out to be a good choice - Hurricane Idalia hit the Florida Gulf Coast and veered up across Georgia and into South Carolina passing directly over Charleston as a tropical storm before heading out into the Atlantic.  We would have been in Charleston when Idalia hit had we decided to go there.  And I'm sure everything would have been disrupted for a couple three days as the storm surge and heavy rainfall caused massive flooding throughout the city and power was out to areas in and around Charleston.  

Using flight and hotel points I had saved up with both United and Hilton, we ended up deciding about a week before we were to start our vacation to go to New Mexico, flying in to and out of Albuquerque.  I also got a pretty good rate on a rental car through National using my former company's corporate rate to get a 2023 Toyota Highlander to use for the week.  After landing in Albuquerque, we first headed up to Sante Fe for a few days.  From there, we took a couple road trips including a very scenic day trip up to Taos.  In all we went on 3 scenic byways during our trip to New Mexico.  I'll highlight those trips in the coming days and weeks.   

Weather in New Mexico when we were there was unseasonably warm - temperatures were 10 to 20 degrees above average.  But like the desert Southwest, humidity levels were low making the temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90's somewhat bearable.  The months of July and August are usually the peak of the monsoon season in the Southwest, but most of the monsoon moisture over the past couple years has stayed to the west of New Mexico.  Complaints from the locals about the lack of monsoon season for a couple years now were a vivid topic of conversation pretty much everywhere we went.  

New Mexico is well-known in the arts community for their large number of art museums, galleries and studios which support local artists throughout the state.  The number of places to see art during our travels across the state was almost overwhelming.  And it was all kinds of art - contemporary, Spanish colonial, sculptures, and Native American culture artwork.  

The most famous of the art museums and galleries may be the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.  20th century modernist artist Georgia O'Keeffe fell in love with New Mexico during visits there in the 1930's, finally buying a ranch in north central New Mexico as a vacation home/inspiration studio.  O'Keeffe became a permanent resident of New Mexico in the late 40's after the death of her husband.  O'Keeffe lived in New Mexico for nearly 40 years before she passed away in Santa Fe in 1986 at the age of 98.  We spent about 90 minutes one day in the O'Keeffe museum looking at some of her famous works as well as some of her more obscure works.  It was worth the price of admission.  

And, of course, there was the food.  "New" Mexican food is different from traditional Mexican food in that they use a lot of potatoes in many of their dishes.  They also use pinto beans as a side rather than black or refried beans.  (I determined that I really liked the pinto beans in their own gravy when I was in New Mexico.)  And, of course, the sauces they use on most of their foods - especially the green chile sauce -  helps enhance the overall taste of the food without overpowering the main dish.  I love the green chile sauce and I have to admit that I was getting sort of burnt out on green chiles by the time we were getting ready to leave.  However, my last meal in New Mexico featured an omelet slathered with the green chile sauce.  We also experienced contemporary New Mexican cuisine in Sante Fe, as well as contemporary Italian food in Albuquerque.  Breakfast is big in New Mexico and we had a number of New Mexican-style breakfasts to start many of our days.  And I had just one burger the whole time we were in New Mexico.  Of course, it was topped with pepper jack cheese and green chiles.

With all the food, I was certain that I had gained 8 to 10 pounds while we were in New Mexico.  With the glaring exception of one meal, nearly every meal we had ranged from very good to great.  When I had my bag weighed at the airport to fly home, it was 11 pounds heavier than when we flew out to New Mexico due to stuff we had picked up during our trip.  I joked to the ticket agent, "I think I'm 11 pounds heavier after eating all this food."  My wife and I made a pact on the plane flight between Albuquerque and Denver that we had to go on severe diets once we got home.

The morning after we got home, I was scared to get on the scale.  I always weigh myself before I go on a trip - either business or pleasure - as I generally lose weight away from home.  This time, however, I was convinced that I was at least 10 pounds heavier.  I jumped up on the scales, afraid to see the damage the great food in New Mexico did to me.  But in one of the biggest and most pleasant surprises that I have had in quite some time, I didn't gain a pound while we were on vacation.  Our scale even goes down to ounces and I weighed the exact same weight - pound and ounce - that I did the morning we left to go to New Mexico.  Even though I was happy with that, my wife and I decided to continue with our plan for our diet and I have to say that I've lost about 4 more pounds since we got back.   

The scenery was spectacular across the New Mexico.  The stark tones of the high desert contrasted with the bright blue skies to make nearly every sight magnificent.  We joined dozens of people on a hillside overlooking Sante Fe for sunsets, we saw pop-up thunderstorms from off in the distance in the afternoons, we explored gorges from the top down and back up again.  And we stopped at a number of churches and sanctuaries that dated back to the 17th century.  It seemed like every small town we drove through had a small adobe-style church that stood majestically in the village.  I'm not a spiritual person, but it was rather neat to see some of the old churches in our travels.  

 

In the days and weeks to come, I'll share with you some of the sights we saw, some of the roads we drove, some of the foods we ate, and some of the cultural highlights from our trip to New Mexico.  I'll even talk a little about the New Mexico license plates which are some of the most colorful and interesting in the United States.  There weren't many disappointments during our visit to the Land of Enchantment.  It was a great vacation getaway.  We didn't have many - if any - regrets when we left.  

Well, except that we never did see a roadrunner while we were there...