Those among you who’ve been Fork readers for any significant amount of time surely know what this week is—it’s Best Of Santa Fe week in the regular pages of SFR. That means that after months of nominations and voting, the people of Santa Fe have told our li’l baby paper what they consider to be the best places, people, bands, restaurants, services, businesses, etc. in all the town. Aaaaaaand, that also means your ol’ pal The Fork does our own little thing, namely we identify our own personal list of Best Of things in the food milieu. These views do not reflect those of our readers, ownership or co-workers, but are rather just our straight-up favorite dishes going down in Santa Fe right now. All categories are voted on by us and us alone, OK? This also has no affiliation with the actual Best of Santa Fe 2025, which drops tomorrow (July 30). Don’t forget that the regular SFR staff will be partying in the Railyard on Friday, Aug.1 from 5-9 pm, too.
And without further ado, let’s get into our own personal Best of Santa Fe 2025—food only edition! Oh, one more second of ado when we mention that everything on this list is meant to be taken as a “right now” kind of thing rather than an all-time kind of thing. Cool? Cool.
Best Way Break Your Fast in Burrito Form
Santa Fe has any number of brekkie b’s to choose from, and we’ve definitely loved more than a few of them over time. Right now, however, we have a tie when it comes to what we consider the best brekkie b in town: Palacio Café and Plaza Café Southside. In all honesty, it comes down to hash browns. Both restaurants pack ‘em into their burritos, but whereas we like Palacio’s version as a handheld sort of deal, Plaza Café Southside’s smothered version is a complete banger. If we had to pick one with a slight edge, we might go Plaza, simply because their hash browns are crispier. But we love Palacio’s red chile a little bit more, so…toss-up, maybe?
Best Way to Break Your Fast Not in Burrito Form
While some might scoff at our insistence that the crepes are not the only reason to visit crepe joint Crepas-oh!, those dorks clearly never tried the Southside restaurant’s chicken breakfast enchiladas. Perhaps the woman-owned business simply tacked the word “breakfast” onto their chicken enchiladas and called it a day, but the “how” of it all matters less than the “why:” These enchies are absurdly delicious. OK, and you might as well get a strawberry/nutella crepe while you’re there. Note that Crepas-oh! has a Railyard location, too, and one out there in Eldorado.
Best Chips & Guac
Anytime we eat at a Mexican or New Mexican joint, we’re always ordering chips and guacamole, because why they hell wouldn’t we? Guacamole is amazing! In other words, we eat a lot of chips in a lot of restaurants, and at the risk of having a restaurant on our list twice, we’ve gotta give the chips crown to Palacio Café. Regular readers likely caught our recent Fork about how we want to eat there more often, so maybe that’s part of it, but owners Damian and Maria Muñoz have something special going on with their tortilla chips. They’re clearly made in-house, but they’re also seasoned a little more thoughtfully than with salt. We’ve yet to identify all of the ingredients of the proprietary blend, but it’s the same stuff they use on the fries—a melange of salt, pepper and some kind of chili powder that’s mild but bursting with flavor. The guac is creamy, too, and doesn’t do that thing where it has green chile. We love chile, but good lord, does it have to be in all the guacs?!
Best Quick Lunch
We’ve gotta go with Cleopatra Café for this one, and it’s not just because its original location is right downstairs from our office. OK, so that’s convenient, we can’t lie, but we’ve been Cleopatra regulars for decades now for two reasons: Literally everything we’ve eaten there, from falafel to chicken to beef and gyros and fries and salads and sandwiches—has been fresh and delicious, but it has also come out of the kitchen soooooo quickly. We’ve been known to rock a little something from the Southside location, too.
Best Slow Lunch
When we need a space to hang for a leisurely lunch ’n’ chat with a friend and we also want a varied menu that’ll have something for vegetarians, carnivores, omnivores and everyone else in-between, we tend to think of Santa Fe Capitol Grill. No joke, we’ve seen many a local chef hanging in there, so this comfy little spot in San Isidro Plaza is clearly doing something right. The patio is pretty nice, too, but so is the inside (where there’s a full bar if you’re looking for that). We recommend the spring rolls, but know that you’ll also find one of the best burgers in town over there.
Best Mid-Afternoon Snack
Sometimes we get the munchies around 2 pm because life is hard and blah, blah, blah, so when we get peckish, we’ve been known to duck into Ozu in Midtown for a quick little Japanese bite from owner Jeff Ozawa. The menu is mighty, but most options aren’t on the larger side, which is a nice way to get a little something that feels like it hits the spot but doesn’t leave us feeling overfed and longing for a lie-down before the day is over. Ozu closes at 3 pm, though, so know that.
Best Cup o’ Coffee When We’re Trying to Support Locally Owned Non-Ohori’s Coffee Shops
We’ve been very clear about our Ohori’s love over the years (as has SFR’s regular food writer), but it’s not the only coffee shop we love in town. In fact, when we’re feeling like our bucks might better be used at a shop that has, say, been affected by an absurdly long road work project, we head to REMIX Audio Bar, where owners Justin Ray and Julie Grace not only kick out kickass cups, they provide a haven for DJs, play punk rock over the speakers and, when nighttime falls, they offer up absolutely delicious ramen bowls conceived by former Fire & Hops chef/current La Lecheria owner Joel Coleman. Seriously, though, folks, the whole Guadalupe Street corridor has been effed for months, and businesses like REMIX (and Boultawn’s bagel spot next door) need our help. Luckily, REMIX slaps so hard, so it’s an easy choice to make, even if you have to walk there just now.
Best Bar Menu
Santa Fe has some legendary bar menus, but the top of the list as of this moment easily goes to Market Steer Steakhouse’s Tack Room bar. You’ll find revamped version of main dining room steaks, plus special items like the caviar faux-frito pie, beef bacon (a banger) and drink specials, plus more. Everything is more affordable than the main dining room, too, and that’s a real boon for those among us who can’t go fine dining for every freakin’ meal.
Best Mocktails
We know that advising folks to drive out to Eldorado is a hard sell for those who don’t live out there, but the mocktails at new-ish eatery Fable are absolutely fantastic. Likely it’s because they're thoughtful and include house-made syrups and infusions. Or maybe it’s because the menu is so delicious, and the bar staff has taken pairing booze-less drinks into account based upon that. Whatever it is they’re doing, they’re doing it right. Everyone loves Fable, it seems, and we get it.
Best Vegetarian Taco
We’ve had the good fortune of tagging along with SFR’s regular food writer for eating assignments, and we must say he’s absolutely right about the calabacitas tacos at El Callejón. Theory’re squash-based, they’re marinated in some kind of delicious marinade, they’re somehow better than the meat tacos. Sound good? It should. You should go there.
Best Desserts
SFR interviewed Coyote Café/Santacafé executive pastry chef Rebecca Freeman right when she took over at both restaurants in January, and since then we’ve seen her menus grow into creative, innovative and downright gorgeous creations. Freeman’s brown butter mousse recipe was even featured in Pastry Arts magazine, and anyone who has sampled her desserts knows precisely what that is. If you visit either restaurant, ask what dessert Freeman is running that particular night, assume it’ll be incredible and for the love of God—save room.
There are tons of other dishes we’ve loved so far this year, but we just realized our word count is out of control at this point, so we’re going to stop there. Stay tuned to The Fork for more missives about dining in Santa Fe, but also popsicles we ate and other comestible delights.
Obviously we’re going to just put this riiiiiigggghhht here.
Also
- You’ll have between whenever you read this and Aug. 4 to nominate folks for the New Mexico Restaurant Association’s Hospitality Industry Awards. How would you go about that, you ask? Just follow this link and then follow the instructions. Look, the New Mexico food world is insane (which we mean as a compliment), so let’s highlight some of the people who make that great, huh?
- We’ve cracked wise about Los Alamos restaurant Beef & Leaf Café before (because rhyming anything with “beef” is objectively hilarious), but we want to sincerely wish the restaurant a happy first birthday. That’s right, Beef & Leaf is hitting its first year in business, and that’s a huge accomplishment in the restaurant world. Most don’t last, folks, so consider this your sign that they’re doing something special up there.
- We wanted to include a reminder for you (and also, really, for us) that Whoo’s Donuts now offers blue corn sourdough pizzas, and that honestly sounds so good right now. We’ve been adrift in a sea of cauliflower crusts and ground chicken crusts, but we’ve been saving a space in our schedule for a special Whoo’s pie one of these days. Maybe it’s this week? We don’t know yet, but we do know we’re going to get that pizza, and when we do, it’s going to be soooo satisfying. Is it overkill to get pizza and donuts?
- We’ve just been made aware of The Spot of Santa Fe, a Rodeo Road food hall-esque…uh…spot that houses three restaurant concepts known as Life Bar, Dre Days Shaved Ice and something called Snacking Panda. We don’t know what all those things are all about yet, but we’re gonna—and soon!
This is what you’re gonna be all like when telling someone to meet you at The Spot of Santa Fe.
More Tidbits
Normally we couldn’t give less of a shit when brands join forces to do stupid brand stuff, but a new collab between Guiness (a beer we adore) and Van Leeuwen (an ice cream brand that makes, like, pretty good stuff) sounds like it might finally be the thing to make us feel feelings. Ummm, Guinness ice cream? Yes. Yes, please. So smart. We definitely once had a stout beer milkshake that a stoner buddy put together, and it was phenomenal, so we assume this will also be great.
While perusing the internet food food-related news items, we came across a site we’d never seen before. Foodtank-dot-com is all about sustainable agriculture and think tankery when it comes to food and food systems. In other words, it’s packed with interesting reading and (sorry) food-for-thought pieces on a global scale. We think you should bookmark it.
The big brains at CNN have a rather interesting piece about how the British regard potato chips. Apparently chips (or crisps as the Brits call ‘em) are a much bigger deal in ye merry olde towne of London (and the rest of the country) than they are in other countries. Wild. We always kind of thought of chips more like something you eat because you're bored, not because you actually want to eat them.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
While there isn’t any new food coverage in the print pages of SFR this week, you’ll definitely find our Best of Santa Fe issue, which contains oodles of food stuff based on what the local love. But we’d actually prefer to talk to you about emails one more time this week. Obviously, we’ve been dealing with some wild email issues, so to circumvent (said like Gob Bluth) that issue, we’re kicking off a new address that should be easier to email and easier for us to respond from—fingers crossed.
That’s right, dear readers, as of this week, you can find us at [email protected]. Drop us your tips and rants and thoughts and whatever else there. We promise that will also result in more responses from us, The Fork. So, yeah, just email there from now on. Word? Word.
Best in the West,
The Fork
