Café Castro is back, Jack!

Santa Fe staple reopens under collective ownership

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All the way back in February, SFR’s regular food writer called up married couple/biz champs Alma Castro and Pascual Hernández of Café Castro to be like, “Hey, ummm, why are y’all closed? You’re freaking people out because we’ve all been eating your food since the freaking ’90s and we could really go for a brekkie b or some enchiladas?!!?!”

While true that the restaurant had been closed for a bit at the time, the reason behind was actually what we in the writing world would call “dope as fuck,” because the whole dang thing was in the process of changing over from a regular-run restaurant to an employee-owned cooperative. 

“No one is going to be in charge alone, and decisions will have to be made with all 13 members of the co-op,” longtime Café Castro employee (and Alma’s aunt) Edna Ruth Castro told SFR at the time.

In short, 13 employees bought into the restaurant and will now operate moving forward in a more democratically propelled fashion. The new model comes with a complex story already told in the pages of SFR, but it’s one about which we’re glad, because Café Castro reopened on Friday, May 23, and we ate there that same day because of course we did. 

It was not hard to find a lunch partner, and we were pleasantly surprised to find the restaurant did not have a wait around 1 pm on its grand reopening day. The restaurant hadn’t super-duper advertised its return save for a few social media posts, but it also doesn’t have to—we’ve all been watching that Cerrillos Road eatery like one massive hawk built out of other hawks. The bad news? We assume it’s going to get busier over there real fast once word spreads. The good news? The food is just how we remembered it, from the tasty guacamole (which doesn’t have chile, thank goodness, because we can have guac without chile sometimes, God!) and the borderline perfect sopaipillas to the red and green we know and love.

Full disclosure? While our lunch bud described his vegan tamales as “pretty good; I enjoyed them, but I feel like they skimped on the chile a little,” we could not have been more pleased with our order of classic cheese enchiladas. On our list of our most favorite red chile options in town, Castro is in the top five easy (number one right now? The red from Palacio’s Damian Muñoz), and not only did everything taste fresh in that way that suggests a kitchen and ingredients that were most likely brand-new or recently deep cleaned, it had that even more important element one longs for with a restaurant—it tasted exactly how we remembered it. Throw in refried beans with melty cheese and a big ol’ honkin’ serving of posole, and we firmly remembered why there’s not another town in this stinktown country where we care to hang out hat (disclaimer: hats are for nerds). In fact, the enchiladas were so beautiful and so delicious, that our sweeping “we’re just gonna eat a couple bites because we’re not so hungry just now,” flew out in the window and was replaced by a “we’re eating it all, don’t look at us!” thing. 

To recap (and add some more thoughts), Café Castro has reopened in its new employee-owned format; the food tastes precisely the same; the workers were all buzzing with excitement at their new prospects; it still felt local and homey as hell. We know there are so many options for chile in this town, but we also know that there are a mere handful of truly special restaurants that help us all feel connected to home and culture. Café Castro is among them, and we’re soooooooooo thrilled they’re back.

Also

  • The folks behind 2 Floyds Southern Kitchen (who formerly ran The Brunch Box Blue in Eldorado) announced a new menu via social media, as well as info that they’re aiming for a late-June opening within the CHOMP food hall. The meny looks like tasty comfort food, including biscuits and shrimp ’n’ grits and mac ’n’ cheese. We’re here for it. Also at CHOMP, Oshia’s Pizza is officially gone, though word on the street is that Henry and the Fish (also formerly of the Atomic Grill if you’re old) owners Joe and Kelly Garcia might just be opening their own little pizza joint in the same spot, though that’s not confirmed just yet. We’re like, 99% on that, though, and we know stuff. We also straight-up love the Hello Sweet Cream ice cream stand in there, which recently made its way to SFR’s 10 Under $10 Summer Guide food list. That list, btw, has lots of good snacks for those in the market for snacks. 
  • We already told you about Café Castro above, but it’s worth repeating that they reopened. 
  • Ohhhhhh dip, Coyote Café/Capital Coal Neighborhood Eatery chef Dakota Weiss has teamed up with somehow-always-in-the-paper-now cookie maven Chainé Peña of cookie biz Chainé Specialty Cookie Shop for a dessert collab featuring strawberry macaron ice cream sandwiches, a strawberry-vanilla crumble and a strawberry ice cream. We want all of that so much. If you want more info, pop into either Capital Coal or Chainé and be like, “where them strawberry shits at?!?!?!” But do it nicely because we love both of those women.
  • We’re not sure how we missed this, because a burrito with fries inside from The Burrito Company is one of our fave lunches of all time, but it would seem that chef Alex Castro (who used to run the kitchen at Mucho Gusto on Paseo de Peralta before chef Paddy Rawal—or Pappy Narwal as we call him—unretired and opened Tulsi all up in there) has been serving food at night at, you guessed it, The Burrito Company. We’re talking dinner service Thursday-Sunday from 5-8 pm.
  • PSA: There is a restaurant in Los Alamos called Beef & Leaf Café, which both made us want to do a queef joke and reminded us of this faux story from parody website The Hard Times-dot-com. To be clear, we’ve never eaten at Beef & Leaf, we just think rhyming is funny. We can’t get through an Edward Lear compendium with descending into hysterics, for example. That’s a limerick joke, baby—you’re welcome. 
  • Lastly in local news this week, the subdivision of Eldorado continues its sincerely impressive streak of opening kickass restaurants with The Deli Barn, a gourmet sandwich shop in the Agora shopping center (if you can’t find it, you don’t deserve sandwiches). Like Beef & Leaf, we’ve yet to eat there, but we love a good sammie and/or sando, so…yeah, it’s on the list. SFR staffers keep on getting solid meals out there, like the burger at Carmelita’s or the everything at Fable.

More Tidbits

Once again, Eater-dot-com’s Amy McCarthy files a banger piece exploring the political and sociological impacts of food stuff with her new piece on how cutting SNAP benefits is mean and short-sighted. We won’t spoil the story for you, but as a little treat, we’ll let you know the way that McCarthy provides GDP numbers with a human bent is inspiring. You should read it. And if you can do that and still think that people don’t deserve help, then fuck off on down the way to a different food newsletter. If you stay, though, and think that helping people is cool, we think you’re cool!

Sorry, but we’re going to share another one from Eater, but only because it has a story about how late Cheers star George Wendt was all about Chicago food. If you somehow missed that Wendt died the other day, we’re sorry. He was a very funny man who created a timeless and iconic character. Rest in power, Norm.

Lastly in not-just-local news, a Spanish food-lover and chef named Miriam Hernández is out to save a specific type of garlic that is facing extinction. Mayhap you’ve never heard of the ajo fino variety of garlic, but that doesn’t mean we want to live in a world without it. In fact, getting our hands on it has now become our sole reason for living. We love and miss you, garlic, even if we’ve never met. Naw, but seriously, that kind of thing is wild, and you can learn more about ajo fino and Hernández if you click right here.

A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence

This week in the print edition of SFR, a love letter to Ohori’s, basically, but full of things you might not know about the enduring local coffee shop. You can read that on Wednesday, May 28. Word.

Number of Letters Received

1

*That’s not counting the weird lists we’re on somehow. Still, we are sad about it.

Most Helpful Tip (A Barely Edited Comment From a Reader)

“SILENCE”

*No one even heckled us this week, and we’re not sure that has ever happened before. Y’all do have our email, right? thefork@sfreporter.com.

Actually Helpful Tip

“I see that you mentioned Pizza Etc. in your recent Fork column about Los Potrillos—you are SO right—best pizza around these parts!  They were my go-to takeout place during the pandemic, and yes, Sergio always remembers me and knows what I will order (either Greek or Giovanni pizza). Please review them again if you can.”

*Alright, Faith Y. We totally will do that. Deal. We’re on it.

Café Castro fan,

The Fork