Fork Survey Responses
When last we wrote you, dear readers, we were conducting our semi-annual survey on whether you love us, what we can do better (like that’s even possible), etc.
We say “semi-annual” because it’s really more like we just do it whenever we think about it. It’s a good chance for us to hear how you feel and to try and, umm, do...things.
If you’re just joining us now, we had a few ground rules:
- Try to be constructive rather than hurtful
- Yelling doesn’t help anyone
- Read your answers back to yourself when you’re done writing them, because you might be surprised how much you want to change
- We will probably share your responses with the rest of the class next week or maybe the week after to give folks time to reply
- Remember that our email is thefork@sfreporter.com, just in case you’re curious
And also, you can read last week’s edition to see what you might have missed by clicking here.
So what did y’all have to say? Let’s take a look at some of our favorites! Oh, and we responded to some, and please know we appreciate all of you so much!
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“I appreciate your tone, knowledge and quirky deep dives. The deep dives are not always topics I would have suggested, but they are always well written, researched and fun to read (and if they aren’t fun to read, heck, no one’s making me!)”
*Wow! We love this response from reader Ellen Z., not just because Ellen is in love with us, but because of the wise and true “no one’s making me!” part. Good point, Ellen! She also went on to say “I think you are doing most things right,” so clearly this is someone with good judgement!
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“I am a local and a native. The Reporter used to be about Santa Fe: a deep culturally wealthy historically wealthy i.ie.rich in culture and history a deeply international city, it has slowly diminished to a trite semi literate advertising vehicle of shallow entertainment for newbies.”
*We’re from here and don’t agree with this, but we wanted to include Consuelo A.’s thoughts because the town is indeed changing and feels weird and they, of course, get to feel these things. We’re really just here to talk about food, and we’d point to many of the paper’s deep-dive stories over the years, but these are still valid points no matter how hard we disagree with the idea that we’re a vehicle for newbies. Thanks for the input, new best friend. Heck, you might actually know us already and not realize that...
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“I have a lot of newsletters to read, and sometimes yours is a bit longer than I want.”
*Chris B. coming in with that realness. We concede that he’s right, and that we sometimes just get going and can’t stop. We’re also aware that the one y’all are currently reading might wind up a little long. We will absolutely work on this, Chris!
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“I would never tell you you’re stupid for not eating meat, but I will tell you that you’re missing out on a good thing. Choosing a life without bacon is something I can’t fathom. You do talk a lot about breakfast burritos, maybe you can throw in where a person can get a good muffin.”
*We concede that we perhaps love a brekkie b more than the average bear.
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“Sometimes the history lesson can be a bit over the top. Not that I don’t like it, because I usually do, but occasionally I skip it. The one that comes to minds is the history of crepes. It was a little too much for me.”
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“OK, sometimes you can get a bit too snarky.”
*Oh, weird, our mom just said the same thing to us.
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“I prefer the fake/real history to the recipes, although I might like the recipes more if you shared recipes from restaurants in town. Or featured a chef and shared one of their recipes. And then you could eventually make a Fork cookbook that compiles all of the recipes from your newsletter, make a million billion dollars with it, and open a fork art gallery with the bounty.”
*Our beloved Sue B. coming in with the hot, hot heat and the good, smart ideas! We’re actually happy to hear Sue say this, because we recently went out into the world and talked to some chefs about this very thing. Making it happen without revealing our super-secret identity isn’t easy, though. We basically have to dress like Daft Punk.
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“[Interviews are] not entirely necessary, unless they’re really contributing something different or compelling to the food scene.”
*This is a good point from reader Jackie C., which sounds like a mobster. Nobody needs to know how to roll a burrito, right? Well, bad point, some people do, but, like, if we’re gonna do interviews, maybe we should be looking for the unexpected things? Oooooweeeee, we have one thing coming up we’d LOVE to spoil for you, but we’re not quite there yet. Stay tuned, Jackie!
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“Love [the music videos and old commercials]. Even when I hate them.”
*Haha, whoa, Caitlin R., that’s how we feel about our readers!
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“I feel like post-pandemic we might end up with either fewer restaurants in Santa Fe, or perhaps they will be open less often. I am not positive either is a bad thing. I hope that we can figure out how to balance the tip=wages part of the restaurant scene, because I don’t think it’s entirely fair that someone hustling at Denny’s is gonna make less because the food they serve is cheaper than at a fancier place.”
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“I do wish more restaurants required proof of vaccination.”
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“I’m just getting back to eating out again after the Omicron break. I generally still prefer to eat outside if I can, but I will eat indoors now if that’s the preferred option, or the only option. I really like the balcony at Optunia, because you are outside and inside all at once.”
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“Can we have a mandate to require sit-down restaurants to heat their restrooms and have hot water for hand-washing? It’s really gross to be at a lovely restaurant with less-than facilities. It puts a damper on the whole experience.”
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“Food trucks. Somebody should do a directory of them, complete with customer reviews that can be accessed online.”
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“Love to read about local food, especially since the confused daily publication rarely does this.”
*We miss Molly Boyle, Jo F.
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“The puerile tone of The Fork is tiresome; not cute, not funny (humor is hard), just tiresome. Thinking about unsubscribing. Check out The Morning Word for a pro move on splitting the difference between straight news and the wit of a personality.”
*We think it’s adorable reader John G. thinks we’ve never read the content from the paper for which we work, that we’re trying to be cute—and that he seemingly would like two newsletters with the same tone. This sounds more like a book to us. He DID like our weird song choice last week, though. Look, John, where else are you going to have this kind of back and forth, bud? We hear you, though—thing is, we just...can’t...stop!!!
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“Sorry to all those Fork readers who take themselves too seriously. I would say they should get over themselves.”
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“No one will ever feel comfortable in quite the same way about dining in a restaurant. At least for the next decade.”
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Wow. We realize that was so long, but we learned a lot. And while that’s not even close to everything we received, we’re going to try to do better. Not with, like, word jokes and shit-talk, but visiting more places and talking to more people and getting into more meat-like things and figuring out exactly how to make everyone feel good at least some of the time. That last one’s a lie, but we’ve been doing this for a long time and we’re ready to evolve or something.
If you didn’t know, The Fork was created by the journalist and food aficionado Rob DeWalt some years ago. Rob died in 2016, and he was a friend to many of us in New Mexico, and many of us at SFR. Our main self-assigned directive at the end of the day is to do something that would make Rob proud or, at the very least, that would have made him laugh. We’re glad we can help some folks while we’re doing that, but we’re mostly just in it for the Rob stuff. We miss him.
Thanks for sticking with us, buds! We’ve got the best readers in the small market niche newsletter world, period.
Basically us now.
Also
-One of our readers suggested in their survey response that we get into the non-vegan bakeries, and we’re totally down with that (for example, we’ve always loved Dulce), but Thomas over at Plantita Vegan Bakery wanted all you all readers to know he’s offering a vegan king cake for Mardi Gras through March 1. Just know that. Otherwise, why does it seem like some bakeries have more Fork appearances than others? Well, Thomas writes us to let us know what he’s doing, that’s pretty much the whole deal. If you want other bakeries in The Fork, tell ‘em to drop us a line, too.
-One of the owners of Railyard restaurant/bar/concert venue Boxcar says a former manager embezzled $27,000. That’s a lot of bucks. According to the Santa Fe Mexican, Boxcar’s Sylwia Handzel took a trip in November, only to return to the missing cash and has since filed a complaint with the Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.
-While out in the world taking photos of a local pastry chef for a super-cool thing we’ll tell you about later, we learned that there’s a new restaurant on Sandoval Street in the former State Capital Kitchen/Lucky Goat Space. It’s called LaTour Experience and, says this pastry chef, it has one of the greatest quiches ever around. While we’re talking about cool things this pastry chef told us, we hear Madeline Chavez at Restaurant Martín is a phenom of self-taught amazingness. Put it on the list! PUT IT ALL ON THE LIST!
-Speaking of Restaurant Martín, owner/chef Martín Rios is one of a whole mess of locals up for a James Beard Award this year, and the list otherwise includes Ahmed Obo of Jambo Cafe, Fernando Olea at Sazon and, in the best new restaurant category, Zacatlán—a place our editor really liked. You can learn more here.
-It was National Margarita Day on Tuesday, Feb. 22, and there’s a dude over at santafefoodiesnm.com who offered up some recipes to celebrate. Santa Fe also boasts a literal margarita trail. It’s wisely called The Margarita Trail (we think they did a great job naming it), and it’s an app-based journey during which every stop is about margaritas. We think you get a T-shirt at the end or, like, a stomach ache.
-We know this next item is coming at you a mite early, but mark your calendars for March 26, because that’s when Food Truck Festivals of America takes over Balloon Fiesta Park for the Great New Mexico Food Truck & Craft Beer Festival. We can only assume it’s exactly what it sounds like, and what it sounds like is radical to the max. We’ll probably remind you again as we get closer, but if we don’t, just don’t say we never brought it up even once. This is that once.
A couple things: The hat sucks (fedoras might as well be “I’m a fucking idiot,” nametags.) Also, what is this? Shitty Tenacious D?
More Tidbits
-Follow this link to a brief explainer on why sell-by and use-by dates on milk and stuff are pointless and irritating. To expand a little, ask yourself—does the government make food companies print these dates? Nope! It’s something companies do to create a weird idea of freshness in your head. It backfired pretty big time, though, and now we throw out soooo much food and milk because we’re wack as hell.
-So we’re all excited about the mask mandate lifting, especially the worker at a local coffee shop who pressured us to remove our mask for a solid several minutes despite our protestations. Vaxx proof isn’t much of a thing anymore these days, either. And while this might sound all well and good to many, this isn’t such a cut-and-dried issue for restaurant workers, who often have to go to work around hundreds of others. Learn about why that’s worrisome here.
-Delish-dot-com has a bazillion keto lunch ideas on its homepage this week. This will be helpful to many, we’d imagine. It’s no paleo, though, which, if we recall our old food history courses, is the diet where you only eat dinosaur meat.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
In this week’s print edition of SFR, our editor finally hit Crash Murder Business, a place where one can drink a unicorn.
Number of Letters Received
78
*Wow! So many! Thanks to everyone who took the time to send answers!
Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader)
We already talked about this.
*Yeah!
Actually Helpful Tip(s)
We got some good tips, just not from any of YOU. Naw, jay-kay, there are just too many helpful tips to possibly single one out.
*Consider us be-tipped.
Recently surveyed,
The Fork
