Eating at the edge of industry.
Sometime after I'd had a lamb stew that melted in my mouth at the Sheva Café in Taos, a Middle Eastern restaurant that sits almost out of town on the northern drag of Paseo del Pueblo next to a BF Goodrich store, I had the inkling of an idea. The next day I was eating a
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limp crepe in downtown Taos and it hit me full force that, perhaps corollary to the tried-and-true rule that food really does taste better when enjoyed
outside, maybe food actually tastes better next to a BF Goodrich store. Or any other kind of repair shop or strangely industrial activity. Or, more likely, maybe it's just that, particularly in a tourist town, food is often better when it's cooked away from the town center.
"Duh," says a friend who goes to Horseman's Haven way out at the end of Cerrillos Road weekly. "Hasn't that always been the case?"
Well, OK. I'm a bit slow to catch on. I would be the last person to say that Santa Fe's downtown doesn't have great restaurants. Yet, in the last five years the area of town that's really blossomed on the epicurean front is the triangle south of Cerrillos Road roughly around Second Street and St. Michael's Drive.
Cloud Cliff, the old-timer which provided the anchor for the area's blossoming, has the most amazing lamb (served with, yes, polenta) seasoned with rosemary and just a hint of curry ($10.50). It also serves blueberry bluecorn pancakes ($7) that I craved (and ate) for an entire nine-month span two years ago. The baked green
mussels ($3.95) at Izmi Sushi are fantastic. The gigantic meatballs ($2.75 each) at Pizzeria Espiritu are bold, with lots of slices of garlic in them.
Chocolate Maven is the epitome of this phenomenon-located in an ugly two-story metal building that
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shares a parking lot with Toyotech and is next door to Waldo's TV and Vacuum, it's always packed. Recently I had a piece of carrot cake ($5.50) there that was firm, with very cream cheesy frosting, unlike the ubiquitous bland white froth often served at less committed cookeries. Whole Maven meals are original and quite good, too, like the ham and brie sandwich, with caramelized apples, baby spinach and red onions ($8.85). Is there a certain caché to eating next to a TV and Vacuum shop or is there just enough dust in the air to cause constant appliance malfunction? Horseman's Haven, that Santa Fe institution, is after all next to a gas station. Does irony increase edibility or does convenience trump toxicity?
Maybe a restaurant that lives next to an auto repair shop has to be good. A restaurant that serves excellent fare draws in the locals who get to know a menu, rather than the poor saps like me with my nasty crepe on Taos Plaza that afternoon, who are just hungry and don't know where else to turn. The sprawls and the malls have their drawbacks, but producing good food isn't one of them, at least not in Santa Fe.
