We’ve done shortie newsletters lately and we’ve done longie newsletters lately, and now we don’t really know what to do or what to think, so we’re just gonna freeform this bad boy (which we say like we ever go into an edition of The Fork with a plan). Let’s go!
This week we’re going to give you a peek behind the journalism curtain, but rather than some desiccated old hot air balloon aficionado handing out hearts that were actually already there, you’ll find what we think is a kind of an interesting bit of shared trivia that most newsrooms are all about, at least in our experience.
Do you know this phrase, election night pizza? Oh, it’s a thing, baby. It’s as real as they come and it’s as old as the hills. Well, at least it’s as old as we know about, and we’re a mystery age, so you’ll have to trust us. Newsrooms across the country carry on this trend on election nights (and it just so happens to be the day before the night of elections when we’re writing this particular missive) where they order a bunch of pizza and feed it to the journalists stuck working late to maintain an eye on democracy. How does this affect us in any way? It doesn’t, really, as we tend to clock out well before the polls close (we’re not “news” writers as it were, so our sticking around would mostly be about getting in the way), but we do have a point: If there’s free pizza available, we want to get that free pizza.
We’re hardly the first to write about this. Take the 2020 election, for example, when NBC News writer Alyssa Newcomb mused that “election night is to pizza parlors what Valentine’s Day is to florists.” SFR has been among stalwart Back Road Pizza eaters on election nights for years now, since even before we moved offices from downtown Santa Fe to Midtown. Also, they have pretty good sodas over there. Also, have you met owner Piper Kapin? So dope. If we had any notes at all to give about Back Road, it’s about how we’re bummed they don’t do shows anymore like they used to once upon a time. But you know what? That’s not their job—their job is to make sweet ‘za, and they’ve done that (which we say having scarfed so much of it and also those garlic knots).
So why are we telling you about this? Well for one, we kind of hope you’ll look it up online, because there are all kinds of fun photos to see. For another thing, we like when people share these sorts of things without ever explicitly talking about it. And thirdly of all (bad grammar=funny joke), you should know how dedicated journalists are. Well, many of them, anyway. For our part, we’ll mill about eating pizza during the early evening lull, then we’ll say our goodbyes. The rest of the crew, however, will be trapped in the office, housing their slices, quaffing their Cokes and making sure everyone wakes up the day after the election able to find out what happened overnight.
Thus, we salute you, election night pizza. We’re proud to have been a part of that because it makes us feel like we’re not alone. Also because pizza slaps and everyone knows it. Hope y’all voted!
Pizza day—the best day of the week.
Also
-Sounds like Albuquerque is getting an In-N-Out burger restaurant by 2027, and you know what that means—the whole town will descend into chaos like it’s the fucking Purge or something. As cars line up in the streets so people can have their burgers, there’s no telling what level of madness will lurk beneath the surface. We’re from California and have long since had our fill of that particular burger, but if the Raising Cane’s opening in the big ol’ city to our south last June taught us anything, it’s that ABQ-ers love their freaking chains, man.
-This just in from Santa Fe Spirits: On Wednesday of this week they’re temporarily shutting down the Read Street Taproom in downtown Santa Fe (it’s on Read Street). “We had what we thought was a small leak at our Downtown Tasting Room, but when we pulled up the floor it turned out to have spread,” reads a statement from the distillery. “Since we had to pull up more of the floor than originally planned, we decided to pull it all up and replace it, and since we were pulling the entire floor up, we decided we may as well do a few other projects that have been on the back burner.” No word on a reopening date yet, but the main distillery on Mallard Way is still there, and folks who pop by in the next little window of days will get 10% off—including the new bottled-in-bond whiskey we were talking about last week. If anything happened to Santa Fe Spirits’ Caitlin Richards, though, we’re gonna FREAK OUT!!! “Is this the ideal time for us to be closed?” the statement continues. “Resounding NO, it is not, but sometimes things have a way of deciding for themselves when they will happen.” Totally. Like the time we got so drunk that we passed out and peed ourselves so hard that our ride just left us unconscious on a couch following a party. The weird thing is that that person died some years later, but we’re OK. The moral of that story? Drink discounted whiskey responsibly—and we cannot be killed.
-Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse’s Shelf Awareness blog highlights some real cool cookbooks this week, and we think you should get some of those rather than just waiting for In-N-Outs to open like the maniacs you are! These include Not That Fancy by Reba McEntire, Céline Chung’s Bao Family Cookbook and more!
-Speaking of cookbooks, it seems that there is now a Game of Thrones cookbook by Sariann Lehrer and Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, and that the forward was written by none other than George “Rip-Roarin’” Martin himself. There’s more info on Martin’s blog, and we understand this is like a companion thing for the books. What goes well with incest and murder? What pairs well with ice zombies? What is Ramsay Bolton’s fucking problem? All those questions and more...actually, we don’t know if they’ll get answered. And really, we’d probably do this kind of thing, too, since it’s basically a license to print money. Winter is coming, though, so...whatever that means.
-Even though SFR’s Morning Word newsletter already told you about it, we’re going to also tell you that Eater-dot-com recently published their choices for 23 Essential Restaurants in Santa Fe. While there are certainly some surprises like Java Junction in Madrid, the list is mostly full of obvious choices like La Boca and Geronimo that, while excellent, are always on these kinds of lists. In fact, this one ultimately doesn’t include OUR essential restaurants (except for Palacio, which RUUUUUUUULES). Someone call us when they figure out that Café Castro, Red Enchilada and Crepas Oh! exist. Oh, actually, they have Zacatlán on there, and that place is good as hell. Hmmm...well, so it goes.
-BREAKING: Speaking of Crepas Oh!, the new Railyard location is a BANGER, and we highly recommend y’all go get crepes. Is it a little more expensive than the Southside original version? Yup. Is that OK for those of us who live closer to The Railyard? Also yup. In any event, know it’s open, know you should go, know that we love you.
-Oh, dip, Taos Pueblo’s CJ Bernal made it to HuffPost food with his Butterfly Café. That’s neat! And the story is neat, too! You can and should learn more by clicking right here.
We’re still hung up on pizza.
More Tidbits
-If you want to know how Eater-dot-com feels about restaurants outside of New Mexico, the food site also published its list of the 12 Best New Restaurants in America. We’ve never traveled specifically for food, but we understand people do that. Like, we totally would do that, but we’re more on a Trader Joe’s Cheddar Rockets budget than we are on a get-on-a-plane-for-a-steak budget.
-This one is mainly hitting states outside New Mexico, but be vigilant, because Tyson has recalled something like 30,000 pounds of its dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets after people reported finding little metal bits in them. We assume you got them for kids if you got them at all, so be extra careful.
-As if DiGiorno’s horrifying Thanksgiving pizza wasn’t enough, Baskin Robbins is getting into the whose-plan-was-this? game with T-Day items including something called “Turkey Cake,” an ice cream cake that’s shaped like a turkey for some reason. OK, well, that’s not as bad as the frozen pizza, but we still don’t know why Americans need their cakes to look like things that aren’t cakes. No wonder France hates us so badly.
-Delish-dot-com has a trés enjoyable list of things to know about Martha Stewart. Now, we say this is enjoyable because we freaking LOVE Martha. Not only does she throw out the most amazing looking recipes all the time for people to check out, she’s also unapologetically stylish. Read the list; love the lady.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
Some of you hate us, but that’s cool. We’ll still sleep tonight. There’s no real food coverage in the paper this week because the stupid election kind of dictated the whole deal. We hope you’ll be OK.
Number of Letters Received
26
*So...none of you made that stew from last week?
Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader)
“You’re like a particularly obnoxious twelve-year old.”
*If we’re 12 then how come we can’t go to the park alone anymore?!
Actually Helpful Tip(s)
“You should do a list of restaurants open for Thanksgiving!”
*Hey! Find just such a list up at santafefoodiesnm.com,
Full of so much pizza,
The Fork
