Santa Fe’s new Taco Bell lurks among historic and innovative new buildings at the gateway to the Baca Railyard and downtown Santa Fe like a tumor among pearls.

When the Green Onion, more typically called the “Grunion,” shut its doors and left St. Michael’s Drive with a dearth of cheap beer, alcoholic quiz games and greasy onion rings, we lost more than just a skeezy bar. We lost the identity of the road, the soul of St. Mike’s.

To honor SFR’s roundup of Santa Fe bars, I took in the famed tapas offerings at Santa Fe’s oldest extant bar, El Farol. The name translates to “the lantern,” a classic tavern signifier of warmth, respite and camaraderie—and El Farol does not disappoint in this regard.

On the one hand, it’s a bad idea to walk into a restaurant like Shibumi Ramenya with a head cold. You’re not going to be able to taste the full range of flavors or grasp the balance of ingredients in the carefully prepared dishes. On the other hand, it just might cure you.

Ireland, so recently famous for an economic boom and an attendant uptick in cultural vitality—including culinary cunning—is taking the economic bust with particular difficulty. As one Irish

A firestorm of closures and changes tore through Santa Fe’s restaurant scene in the past year. From a high elevation, it looks like utter devastation. But a closer, ground-level view reveals that, just as the carnage of a forest fire encourages healthy new growth, Santa Fe’s culinary future is bright despite the burn.

Most Americans didn’t notice that our once-great nation officially died on Nov. 30. We were too fattened up on the unnaturally plump and juicy meat of factory-farmed Thanksgiving turkeys to notice the US Senate passing the Food Safety Modernization Act (S510) in a rare display of bipartisan unity.

A new mezcal, born in a secret, dingy rabbit hole of a bar in Guatemala, will soon share the shelves with Del Maguey and open new doors for brave libators.

When you find yourself knee-deep in incoming orders, with hot fry oil splattering your hands and batter exploding across your chest like a doughy gunshot wound, you start thinking that line work in a restaurant kitchen is not an easy job.

A proper food journalist would no doubt offer up a Thanksgiving-related article at this time of year. But it’s hard to focus with a new food cart in a vintage 1967 Airstream just a few blocks from the SFR offices.