Do y’all remember in late 2022 when Felipe’s Tacos owner Felipe Martinez told Santa Fe he was retiring? It was a grim time in Santa Fe history for so many of us, since we’d come to love literally everything about Martinez’s taqueria. And though Rodrigo Rodriguez—a man who’d cooked for Martinez for a number of years—took over with his own taco joint after that, the space was never the same. It’s a Fusion Tacos location now.
We mention this because we recently heard longtime Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen owner Soma Franks sold her restaurant to longtime employee Angel Lopez and his sons, and we’d like to offer them some advice right out of the gate: Keep the breakfast tacos, unchanged.
See, if Rodriguez had opted to continue serving the Felipe’s no carne burrito and/or quesadilla, folks would’ve continued to support the place. We know we would have. If these new Sweetwater owners maintain the breakfast tacos as they’ve been, longtime patrons will surely continue to frequent the Midtown eatery. How do we know this? Because we love those freaking tacos, and we don’t want them to change and we will straight up keep eating there if there are tacos to be had.
This isn’t a new obsession. If you go back to this 2021 edition of The Fork, we even mention how much we loved those brekkie Ts. And why wouldn’t we? We’re talking fluffy scrambled eggs, fresh avocado and watermelon radish served up on blue corn tortillas with a bit of pico de gallo. Oh, sure, you could add bacon or something, but there’s no need—and the dish is the perfect size and volume for a breakfast (or lunch) that’ll fill you up without leaving you overfull. When SFR’s offices were in Midtown, we were scarfing those bad boys a few times per week, even, and it gave us the energy we needed to come up with cool descriptions for things like “brekkie Ts.”
In summation, we salute the new Sweetwater ownership and love stories that involve employees rising up to take the reins. We hope they find cool new ways to pair the wine list and we hope they experiment with dishes of all sorts. But we also hope they keep those brekkie Ts. We all need them in our lives!
What’s that, you say? You don’t love breakfast tacos? First of all, shut up. Secondly, Sweetwater’s menus are still super-impressive, especially since it’s 100% gluten-free. Now, we’re not trying to put gluten promises into the mouths of the new owners (nor are we going to feature any set prices here, as things can and do change during times such as these), but with options like smothered brekkie Bs, Buddha bowls, kimchi fried rice and a freakin’ pizza with cashew basil pesto, you’d be a dang fool (said like Iggy Pop during one of his downright seminal performances as Nona’s dad on Pete and Pete) to ignore it. Once the new owners have been all up in there for a bit, we’ll make sure to visit. For now, be kind to the Lopez fam—unless they ditch those breakfast tacos, in which case write us at [email protected] immediately so we can be all like, “What the hell?!”
This is kind of madness, but we get it.
Also
- New Mexico-born VARA Winery & Distillery picked up some sweet honors at both the New York International Wine Competition and the Sunset International Wine Competition. Congrats to VARA on being recognized for their Silverhead Brut, Silverhead Zero Dosage, New Mexico Sparklin Brut and silverhead Brut Rosé, among others.
- Normally we’d put that Sweetwater thing here about local news, but we’ve already done all that brekkie T whining. If you skimmed the intro section, just know that Sweetwater owner Soma Franks has sold the restaurant to her longtime employee Angel Lopez and his kids. Word? Word.
- While perusing the internet for foodstuffs, we happened upon a post from Jaripeo Grill and Beer, a dope name for a restaurant and another spot that sells our beloved pupusas. That brings the number of pupusa options up to quite a few in town at this point. In case you’re wondering our favorites, we’re gonna go with Red Enchilada, La Provedencia food truck and Torogoz, the last of which serves a sandwich that made SFR’s food critic cry.
- Believe it or not, we’re already seeing chile roasting setups popping up in parking lots around town. On the one hand, that rules and it’s gonna smell so good and we can’t wait for stew. On the other hand, does that seem a little early? Usually it was more like fall before we’d see those bad boys out there roasting up a storm, but growing chile has indeed proven more challenging along with climate change and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad shape of the world in which we live. Of course, chile agriculture is fraught with challenges, so we should maybe just be glad that some of the old ways (y’know, like parking lot drum roasters) remain intact, whatever time of year it might be. All we know is this—we love chile.
- Sounds like Cake’s Café on Galisteo Street will now open up on Mondays, which it apparently didn’t do before. We’re down with that, not least of which because the spot hosts a lot of cool events, but because the breakfast is actually pretty dang good. Even cooler is that owner Haley Crumbacher is all about community. Also, you can drink booze there. So yeah, call ahead, visit the site, do whatever you’ve gotta do.
- Looks like the aptly named downtown burrito joint The Burrito Company is offering up a free cup of coffee with an order of a breakfast burrito between now and Sept. 30. That’s just straight-up civilized and cool, and kind of the perfect Santa Fe deal, but you’ll need to show them the coupon that appears in this image from le Facebook.
- We’ve often said that Boxcar chef Eric Stumpf serves up meals that are a million times better than you’d expect from a sports bar (and music venue), which is not a knock on bars that serve food at all and more about us highlighting how unexpected and elevated that Boxcar menu can be. In this, we include the Chef’s Supper Club, an ongoing series featuring dope-ass meals created by Stumpf served up in a foodie-friendly atmosphere with cool buds and killer menus. The next one drops on Thursday, July 31 (there are others after that) and appears to be all about truffles with items like a burrata truffle salad, a chicken truffle roulade and choco truffle for dessert. Tickets run $95 per person. You can learn more and reserve your spot(s) by clicking right here.
If you don’t know Pete and Pete, now’s the time to get into it, especially if you’re an adult.
More Tidbits
- Absurd snob water brand Liquid Death (which is literally just fucking water in a can with a metal font, so relax) has collab’d with Post’s Fruity Pebbles cereal (yes, that’s the Flintstones one) for a new Fruity Pebbles flavor. As always, when brands do things like this, we mainly feel sad for the people who get excited. Why? Because life is fleeting, and the elements worth caring for during that short, terrible, beautiful existence almost certainly don’t need to include water that tastes like fucking cereal. If you’re the type of person who is excited for this dumb shit, click here to learn more. Otherwise, hug your children and tell them you love them.
- That last item came to us from a site we just learned about called Sporked-dot-com, and we like it despite how there are about a billion food sites that just talk about all the dumb crap at Trader Joe’s and Costco and wherever. Still, we’re going to share one more link from Sporked this week, because it’s a ranking of the best instant ramens around. We find this valuable, because we’re actually pretty into those instant ramens when we get the chance. Do you have a fave?
- Lastly in not-just-local news this week, the folks at Allrecipes-dot-com have tragic news for us as it turns out sun tea (which is that tea you steep in the sun) might actually be kind of dangerous. It would seem that tea leaves can harbor bacteria, and the risk of that goes up in the warm, warming warmth of the sun’s warming warmness. It’s official—nothing feels good anymore and everything hurts; like some kind of opposite-Vonnegut quote that hurts all bad because sun tea is pretty tasty, actually. Ah, well, we can always just make tea inside like a dork.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
There shall be no food in the print edition of SFR this week. Instead, a couple notes: 1. Nobody writes us anymore and that’s all sad. 2. Best of Santa Fe is right around the corner (July 30), so get ready for all the food winners. Side note? There are some upsets this year, just be aware of that when the issue drops.
Breakfast-lovin’ fool,
The Fork
