We’re always out here on these mean streets looking for low-guilt treats—y’know, like that dairy-free coconut whipped cream we won’t shut up about. See, we get a sweet tooth at night around 9 pm without fail (we assume some kinda nutritionist would tell us it’s about a habit we formed long ago or whatever), but we have aged to the point where we can’t just eat whatever whenever. What’s a Fork to do?
Enter Sour Grapes from the company Fruit Riot (which pretty much glosses over the actual Fruit Riots of our youth…just kidding, that’s not a thing), a frozen sweet snack that’s our new favorite thing. The idea is simple: Frozen grapeses (said like Gollum) with a bit of lemon juice and sour candy on the exterior. You might have seen TikTok influencers making a similar snack, because they’re pretty low-cal all things considered and, frankly, they knock out the sweet tooth with just a couple of grapes.
Said grapes come in three kinds, including mixed berry, lemon lime and green apple, and the best part is that the fine people at Fruit Riot (which sounds like a super-cool queer band with songs about Stonewall) freeze them grapes when they’re in their prime, which neatly sidesteps that weird/sad mealy grape thing that can happen when you don’t get to them in time. Plus, at 45 calories for roughly 5-7 grapes, you can totally eat 14 grapes and not feel like you’re ruining your life at night.
And look, we know that we were just talkin’ all about how we love Goodpop popsicles, but we’ve gotta go where the heat is, so to speak, which is to say that if you don’t change up your sweet treats from time to time you get bored. You can believe us, too, because we’re no strangers to popsicles. Heck, in 2022 we went looking for the history of those bad boys in our not-award-winning Fork edition, “Where the Heck Did Popsicles Come From?”, so you know that we know whence we speak.
Anyway, you can find these frozen grapes at Whole Foods, and if you do have them, drop us a line at [email protected] to let us know how you liked ‘em. If you’re anything like us, you’re gonna love ‘em.
As we were writing about sour treats, we couldn’t help but recall the weird world of ’90s ads for sour treats.
Also
- We're sad to learn the owner of Rancho de Chimayo Restaurante Florence Jaramillo died at her home in Chimayo on Monday. Mrs. J, as she was known to many, co-founded the restaurant with her husband Arturo in 1965 and became a legend in the years since. The restaurant will be closed Sept. 23 and 24 and reopen Sept. 25.
- We hear the new owners at Joe’s Dining are remodeling the place, and that there might have been some staff turnover. If we’re honest, we’re OK with that, because who could forget our 2024 piece about how we didn’t love our experience at Joe’s? Anyway, we wish new-ish owner Joaquin Garofolo luck. He took over from founders Roland and Sheila Richter in April, and that’s never easy with a Santa Fe restaurant—like that time the Teahouse dared to serve not-just-eggs and the people of this city lost their freaking minds (we miss former Teahouse chef Martin Blanco’s ube dishes every damn day).
- Speaking of remodeling, new-ish sushi joint Fu Sushi has temporarily closed for a remodel. Be like Ford Prefect and don’t panic about it. They’ll reopen soon, probably.
- The folks from Rio Chama Prime Steakhouse reached out to let us know they’ve got a new dessert going, and it’s a strawberry-banana cream pie. Interesting. We don’t hate the sound of that, honestly, even if it’s almost smoothie adjacent. And the more we think about it, we’re not sure we’ve ever seen such a thing precisely like that. Have you tried this pie? We might have to pop over there. When we think back over our favorite treats of all time, banana things end up pretty high on the list, including the banana cream tart that Dulce used to make and a vegan banana shake we once sampled in Northern California.
- While in a very important business meeting the other day for very important business reasons that are also food-related and which we hope to unveil soon, we were ushered into a room inside Palace (fka Palace Prime) that we never knew existed. Now, we’ve been patrons of that particular space for years, dating back to the Palace Saloon days, then Señor Lucky’s, then The Palace, then Palace Prime and now, just Palace—and we never knew they had a little bar back there in the back and a cute-ass little patio. That’s on us, and no need to shout if you already knew. The head waiter (an excellent dude by the name of Austin Flick) told us that the auxiliary bar space was recently-ish redesigned with a mind toward absinthe, but that they just kind of went all-out with it being a bar bar. He even hinted at some apres-ski options come the wintertime coldsies. We, meanwhile, tried a very tasty mocktail from the bartender Angelo, with a very tasty zero proof gin and a bit of simple syrup and lemon-y goodness. Of course, Palace having good mocktails isn’t news to us as that other food guy kinda raved about it in 2022.
- Ummm, excuse us, but the Picnic NM Cheese & Charcuterie cheese shop inside the CHOMP food hall has really been on fire since, well, since always, but recent cheese additions, not to mention a Chicago dog that looks INCREDIBLE and also sandwiches and other items kind of all add up to something special. They’ll still make your precious cheeseboards, too, so just relax and re-affix your monocle before you wig out. You good? Good. Be Good.
- Here’ your final reminder that the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta is going down, and it’s this week from Sept. 24-28. We can’t speak to what ticketing options are left, but you can check the site for all the details. And if you don’t know what the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta is all about, it’s a fiesta dedicated to wine and chile. There. Educated.
- Lastly in local stuff this week, Santa Feans are having a lot of feelings on Reddit-dot-com about a banner recently hung by downtown bar/restaurant Boxcar that reads “Safe Space for Texans.” You can read that Reddit thread here. We have no feelings about it other than the complicated relationship we have between wanting tourists to spend money here and the age-old thing where Santa Fe seems allergic to those tourists being from Texas. Their money monies, don’t it? Naw, but furreal, your real issue is with how this city has very few jobs outside of service and retail and lodging, and in order for people to do even a little bit OK at those jobs, we need people from out of town spending money here. But even so, many of those jobs don’t pay that well, so we get that it’s frustrating for everyone to work serving out-of-towners while they barely hold onto their housing and lives here. Santa Fe’s so weird. Anyway…word. Oh, before we forget, you should know that Boxcar chef Eric Stumpf makes super-good food.
Even if we balk at Texans coming here, Lyle Lovett says they’d welcome us there.
More Tidbits
- The FDA would like you to know that you might have unsafe pots and pans all up in your house. As it turns out, specific products from brands Tiger White, Silver Horse and JK Vallabhdas might be seeping lead into food you make in them. There’s more info right here from our friends at Food Network-dot-com. Just kidding. They’re more like frenemies. Just kidding, they have no idea who we are.
- Speaking of recalls, Costco has recalled a tuna product it sold across 33 states, including New Mexico, so maybe check on your ahi tuna wasabi poke if you got that. More info right here.
- Speaking of government bodies, the current administration (you know the one we mean…the one run by a literal fucking monster) recently canceled a survey tracking how many Americans have trouble with food access, which sounds pretty bad on the face of it, at least according to USA Today there in that link from a few words ago. Not to worry, though, as the USDA press site has some dumbass news release about that, which states “these redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.” We don’t want to live on this planet anymore. For the record, it’s well-established that many Americans, often children, struggle to know where their next meal will come from.
- On that note, some folks just don’t care if you die, but The Food Depot in Santa Fe cares. If you need help yourself, you can visit the website for more info. If you have a few bucks to donate, you can and should do that, too. Our hot take is that if you’re thinking about donating food, rather than saddling a nonprofit with useless cans of evaporated milk and pumpkin mix, give them some butter and milk and such. But for real, if you just give them money, they’ve got deals in place with distributors and are in a much better position to stretch them bucks. As always, though, never ever ever ever ever do that thing at grocery stores where they act like your paying for a bag of food for the needy is the same as the corporation helping someone.
In Summation
We’ve been thinking a lot about Oscar Mayer bologna recently, because we ate that a lot as a kid. We still think about it sometimes, too, but we have this weird block in our head now that says adults shouldn’t eat bologna, and maybe, actually, no one should eat bologna (processed foods and all that). So here’s our question to you: Are you the type of person who thinks you just have to sometimes stop being weird and give yourself a little treat you remembered liking from childhood? Or are you the type who thinks they’re above bologna? Absolve us. Give us bologna permission. Help us break free! No, but seriously, where do you fall on that topic?
Graped-up big time,
The Fork
