Oooh! Lamb!
The Fork has a long and complicated cultural background, but the thing we're the most is Greek. Our great grandfather Leo (who was so Greek he made Zorba look like a chump) came to America right around the beginning of the 1920s. He'd settle in North Dakota, raise a farm and 16 children (not kidding, 16 children), and one of those children became our grandma, Margaret (her friends call her Babe). Anyway, Gramma Maggie is Greek AF, y'all, and she also has fancied her quite a culinary genius over the years. In a lot of cases, she wasn't and, if we're being honest, we're not sure what her constant reminders of her Greek-ness had to do with a lot of the things she made other than the Greeks' love of being jovial and bouzouki dances that start slow but then get faster.
But we digress. Here are some Greek things Gramma used to make (and where you might get similar things in Santa Fe). Scream "Opa!" or something when and if you're eating them. For if the wine flows enough and we sacrifice that goat juuuuuuust right, we're all gonna get laid!
Tzatziki Sauce
We don’t care what anyone says, you can put this creamy/cucumber-y stuff on everything. We’re talking steaks, veggie burgers, salads, peanut butter sammies, ice cream, bagels, tiramisu—the options are endless. This one was consistently nailed by ol’ Gramma and, according to legend, the recipe was handed down from an ancestor so ancient that Kronos himself was like, “Damn, you old!”
Get it Local: A few places come to mind, but the souvlaki at Pyramid Café—kebabs with tzatziki—is one of the reasons we wish we still ate meat.
Lamb
We always thought that lamb was either too earthy or too minty thanks to that weird thing people do where somehow lamb and mint get combined, but every so often—like on birthdays or Greek holidays such as Bouzouki Day (psych—that’s not a thing!), Gramma would really nail it.
Get it Local: Did you know Tune Up Café has a lamb-burger (which is fun to say because it kind of rhymes with “hamburger”)? Well, they do. Also, if you’re a millionaire, Geronimo has a rack of lamb that we hear has launched wars and stuff it’s so good.
Baklava
This one was for special occasions, like getting parole or when you’d successfully not had a crippling panic attack for more than three days in a row. What we loved about Gramma’s version was that she layered it just right, marrying this ultimate combo of crunchy and chewy the likes of which we may never see again.
Get it Local: Of course, we’re not ones to split hairs, and we’d like you to know that Cleopatra has pretty kickass baklava if you’re looking for that kind of thing. Y’all, they’ve got two locations.
How about all y'all? What kinda things did your grandparents make? Extra points if you're Hispanic and your abuelo or abuelita makes fudge and/or chile as well as our buddy Ryan's do. They give us some at Christmas, and it's always magic; kinda makes our gramma look like a pile of old rags, to be honest.
Well, this is just amazing.
Also
-We've got information on a soon-to-open restaurant here in Santa Fe. Are you ready? OK, here it is: Sazón owners Lawrence and Suzanna Becerra have joined forces with Sazón head chef Fernando Olea for a new fine dining Italian place on Johnson Street (that's the one with the O'Keeffe Museum) called Sasella. It'll have a chef all its own in Cristian Pontiggia, whom we hear is recognized officially by the Italian government as a master chef. Holy smokes! Expect Sasella to appear sometime this June.
-We're here to eat crow, too, because it turns out that Edible Alchemy (that CBD restaurant we mentioned in last week's newsletter) shut down a bit ago. We should've known, and we apologize, especially to The Apothecary Restaurant, which is super-still-open and from whom we received a very friendly note about our error. If you're looking for CBD foodstuffs, that's the place. Stay tuned for more as we (or our regular food columnist Zibby Wilder) will surely visit ASAP.
-Santa Fe Spirits proprietary Wheeler's Gin is now available at Costco in Albuquerque—and you know what that means: It's time to drink responsibly!
-Santa Fe High's Culinary Team placed third in the New Mexico ProStart Invitational in Albuquerque in March. Five teams entered, and each team was tasked with creating and executing a three-course meal in one hour with only butane—no electricity or running water—and our teenage friends did great. Congrats, teenage friends, and you're bound to defeat those Deming high-schoolers who took first place next time!
More Tidbits
-The 2019 winners of the James Beard Media Awards were recently announced, and it's like a summer reading list of kickass food books. Find 'em here and maybe start making stuff (and sending it this way).
-We're not sure if this is old news (and we are really sorry to that one guy who HATES old news if it is), but it seems like Burger King's plans to have a meatless burger have been working out, and the super-chain plans to roll it out across the country by the end of this year. We're double-down.
-If you're as into bananas and grapes as The Fork is, you might find this twitter thread about fake flavors quite fascinating. If you hate fun and friendship and plan on sending us a mean email, just skip it.
-Celebrated culture journo Gustavo Arellano (of Ask a Mexican fame) has a stunner of a food column in a recent LA Times about learning a recipe from his mother right around the time she entered hospice. It's well worth a read.
-And speaking of fascinating food tales, NPR has a mighty interesting read about the Pennsylvania Dutch and their turning of a small town into a snack food behemoth. Ever heard of Hanover? You know—the pretzel company you definitely have heard of? It's in there. Oh … it's in there.
-Setting aside how we love a seven-layer burrito and don't care what anyone says about it, it was rad to learn, as eater.com reports, that Taco Bell hiring fairs are pretty cool. We also hear they help pay for college.
-Lastly today (which makes this section a seven-layer section), HuffPost Food rounds up some of the weirdest American diet fads throughout time. Our favorite? The one where you drink all the milk.
Avoid huger tantrums!
Finally
In the print edition of SFR, food countess Zibby Wilder recommends a couple killer cocktails and lets us in on why the upcoming New Mexico Cocktails and Culture fest is so, so sweet.
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A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
Number of Letters Received
39
*And we’re not best friends with Edible New Mexico for sure.
Most Helpful Tip of the Week
“You might be an idiot.”
*”Might?”
Actually Helpful Tip
The one about The Apothecary Restaurant.
*Again, we’re real sorry!
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Free of hunger tantrums,
The Fork
