Food in Santa Fe is generally very good. People from other parts of the state, and other parts of the country, are terribly envious of us. And yet, there are several glaring holes in our culinary landscape. There is shockingly little non-New Mexican ethnic food in this town. What's that all about?
Santa Fe, an international community if there ever was one, can't even support a healthy competition between bagel makers, much less Thai restaurants. ***image2***Albuquerque has a Tunisian restaurant and Santa Fe still has only one Vietnamese place? Ugh. At least there's plenty of sushi here.
This was the line of babble running through my head last week as I ate monkfish liver and a spider roll over at Shohko Café. I was dining with two colleagues who also write about food, but for an unnamed daily paper. (What? Like we don't talk to each other? Come on. We're like pro basketball players who hang out off the court. Well, except that after lunch we don't all go back to the hotel and have a Cristal-fueled orgy with 22-year-old groupies. Bummer.)
But about the Shohko Café: If you managed to read all the way through last week's Best of Santa Fe issue, then you might have noticed that Shohko won the award for best sushi restaurant. Incidentally, it's been almost exactly a year since the original owners returned. If you haven't been there lately, you'll notice that the menu has changed, and judging from the grumbling I've been hearing, the prices have gone up a bit, but the food has also improved.
There is an enormous list of sakes at Shohko, which will surprise and delight fans of Japanese rice wine. By the way, did you know that rice wine isn't really wine? Technically, wine is made from fruit; beer is made from grains. But we have to categorize things, so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms-also known as the bureau of all naughty/fun things-puts sake in another category altogether: wines made from other agricultural sources. Whatever.
If you're interested, here's a quick rundown of how sake is made. Special rice is steamed, then the starch is converted to sugar, fermented and turned into alcohol. It is filtered, heated and aged in casks. Years ago, nearly all sake was served heated; now there are loads of premium sakes that are served chilled and sake snobs won't drink anything heated. Personally, I don't like sake warm or cold, but I'll tell you that I don't think you're uncool if you like hot sake. If it was good enough for the Japanese for the past 2,000 years, then it's good enough for you.
If you like sake and you like sushi, you should try Shohko again. The plain white walls and varnished vigas give the place a serene atmosphere to rival The Compound, especially if you go outside of peak hours. The sushi is quite good and the service is delightful.
I think many of us would agree that the best atmosphere in Santa Fe is at the opera grounds. You could feed me Cheetos and Pabst Blue Ribbon with that view and I'd say it was the best meal of my life. (But who am I kidding? I love Cheetos and PBR!) If you don't want to slum it like me, you can always order dinner from Angel Food. They've got a kiosk on the grounds where you pick up the dinner you ordered the day before. They do salmon with ginger sauce, roasted beets, potato salad and hazelnut cheesecake, or Yucatecan pork tenderloin with jicama pear salad, corn and wild rice, and fig-walnut cookies. There are two more menus, one is a chicken breast with middle-eastern flavors and the other is a vegetarian thing with spinach pie and bulgur pilaf. All of the dinners come with bottled water and are served on a little bamboo tray. If you get there early enough you can grab a seat at one of the picnic tables in the upper parking lot. Dinner costs $30, which is not cheap, but if you're rich or lazy it's a steal.
While we're on the subject of sophisticated dinners, there are some tempting foodie events tied into the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. (Honestly, I had to Google "what is chamber music" just now, because it sounds like some goth thing that this dominatrix I know used to do. You know, all Ministry and corsets and porcelain fangs. But, uh, yeah, I guess it's something different.)
Anyway, on Saturday, Aug. 6, there's a bluegrass concert (no porcelain fangs allowed!) over at the Lensic. It will be followed by a dinner at the Eldorado hotel, and since Chef Martin Rios took over as executive chef at the hotel this spring, that means that the food at this shindig had better be good. So if somebody invites you to go, and you know as much about chamber music as I do, tell them you'll go as long as dinner at the Eldorado is included.
Shohko Café
321 Johnson St.
982-9708
11:30 am-2 pm and 5:30 pm-9 pm Monday-Friday, 5:30 pm-9 pm Saturday
Angel Food Catering
983-2433
Opera trays available two hours before showtime.
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
239 Johnson St.
982-1890
Tell me where to eat! I need your input. Send all of your tips, gripes and raves to
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