Alex De Vore
One of the best parts about being part of the Santa Fe food world is that you get to know a lot of local chefs. I know we all have this image of the loudmouthed kitchen genius screaming epithets and F-bombs at their staff, but that concept was actually television propaganda which sort of fizzled out alongside humanity’s weird celeb chef obsession from the 1990s, and the chefs in Santa Fe are almost all very nice people (emphasis on the “almost,” but I’ll save my silver bullets for my death bed) who will totally come up to you in the street or at the gym to talk turkey, as it were.
Case in point? Chef (or former chef if you wanna get semantic) Tony Blankenship goes to my gym, always says hello followed by some nice comment about killing it and, if I’m real lucky, will drop restaurant recs my way. This is precisely how I came to eat at Joe’s Tequila Bar the other night following a Blankenship stop ’n’ chat wherein he said a recent dinner had pleasantly surprised him. Good enough for me.
First off, I simply must hand it to Santa Fe’s hotel restaurants. For years I lumped them into a part of my brain someplace between my disdain for tourists and my ultra-disdain for parking downtown. Still, having seen the light thanks to chef Joshua Ortiz’s totally bangin’ menu at the Hilton’s Ortiz (he’s not one of the Ortizes from the namesake, just saying) a few years back, I’ve since fallen in love with Agave at Eldorado Hotel & Spa, La Plazuela at Hotel La Fonda and Luminaria at Inn at Loretto—and we can now add Joe’s Tequila Bar and chef Roberto Menjivar to the list.
Joe’s is the kind of place where the locals start to go, by the way. In fact, no sooner had my brother and I started digging into a very generous portion of guac and chips for our app than we ran into curator and Duende gallery co-founder Jamie Herrell. In my younger days, I loathed being shackled to run-ins anyplace; now, as an old, I find it delightful to exchange a few words with an arts pro who also popped by a restaurant looking for killer chips. And we all found them. As I say, Joe’s guacamole appetizer might run $12, but you get a huge ramekin of the stuff, and you won’t contend with a head of freaking lettuce hidden beneath the avocado. We also started with the zero proof siesta, an alcohol-free tequila (yes, an alcohol-free tequila) mocktail with grapefruit and bitters that not only mimicked the taste of alcohol quite nicely, but tickled our tastebuds with citrusy goodness. At $10, I get that it won’t be for everyone, but sometimes having a little something available while your friends and dining companions sip the real stuff makes one feel less excluded and/or precludes, “what, you’re not drinking?!” convos from the people in our lives.
By the time we’d finished the guac, I was personally ravenous and selected the garnachas, a sort of combo of tacos and nachos that comes with three masa tortillas absolutely smothered in red chile-roasted shredded beef, cotija, escabeche (aka pickled onion in this case) and tomatillo salsa ($15). Menjivar nailed this dish, from the way he prepared the masa to its final crispy evolution to the complementary taste of the beef and escabeche. Shredded meat is always so particularly delicious for whatever reason, and Joe’s did not disappoint from the slight kick of the chile to the juicy shreds that melted away in my mouth. Each garnacha was so packed with ingredients that I could only finish two of the three, but that might have had something to do with my brother having ordered chorizo croquetas ($14). He described them as “chorizo-y fish sticks,” which is not off in the least. Deep-fried to a borderline perfect golden-brown, each little croqueta felt like a texture and taste experience all its own. The first bite? We were hit with the earthy chorizo flavor. The second? A bit sweeter. With sides of spicy ranch and aioli to sample, we found a new local dish to obsess over. Chorizo—it’s not just for burritos anymore, my fellow white people. Plus, a veritable pile of croquetas appeared on the table, and though I ate one or two myself, he also couldn’t clean his plate.
We ended the evening with a classic créme brûlee. As I’ve said before, that particular dessert is a staple and a good indicator of whether a restaurant actually cares. Not since my days bussing at Santacafé have I enjoyed this particular dessert more, though truth be told, I’m not sure I’d make it my regular order on return trips to Joe’s simply because a créme brûlee has become sort of played-out. But actually, I’m not sure I’d stick to any one order were I to become a regular patron. Elsewhere on the menu, we found enchiladas and burgers (with meatless options available) and a chipotle shrimp that sounded divine. Now that my “hotel restaurants=awesome” theory has continued without being disproven, too, I hope others will take a similar approach. Joe’s Tequila Bar is a beautiful and bright if hotel-y feeling space, too, with prompt service and a frankly bonkers tequila selection. What’s not to love?
