A little more than three years ago, iconic Santa Fe restaurateur Felipe Martinez announced he’d retire and close his beloved Felipe’s Tacos taqueria in Midtown Santa Fe. By Dec. 15, he’d run his last day and closed up shop forever. It still hurts.
At the time, SFR arts and culture editor Alex De Vore very publicly whinged about the impending closure repeatedly. Seems De Vore, who came to Santa Fe after growing up in Southern California, had fallen in love with Felipe’s because it was about the closest thing to SoCal Mexican food he could find when his family moved here. What followed were decades of quesadillas, no carne burritos, al pastor and pico de gallo.
"When I thought of the concept, which was healthy, health-conscious—this concept was around 50 years ago in Los Angeles," Martinez told SFR in 2019, when the restaurant hit 25 years. "When I moved here, I focused on raising my daughter as a single parent, but I also saw there was a lack of health-conscious Mexican restaurants, and it was also this new chapter in life."
That new chapter came after the death of his wife (cancer, sadly) and a move to Santa Fe from Los Angeles. The rest of us reaped the benefits for eons, it seemed. And there’s still nothing quite like Felipe’s Tacos in Santa Fe.
Yes, a number of Mexican spots, taco trucks and taquerias have popped up in the years since Felipe’s opened, kicked ass and eventually closed. But whereas Martinez had grown up with the Southern California-style tacos—and adopted a NorCal Mission-esque burrito plan, too—Santa Fe’s eateries rarely stray too far from the super-duper Nuevo Mexicano food style. Even Fusion Tacos roughly 7,000 locations might offer carnitas and birria and a few other things that don’t feel entirely New Mexican, but, just like our editor, we happen to know that it’s not quite the same. Perhaps this has something to do with the absurdly clean nature of Martinez’s kitchen (seriously, that place was spotless) or the way he made beans just right and quesadillas just right; and how everything was just, like, pretty healthy all things considered. All we really know is that when longtime Felipe’s Tacos cook Rodrigo Rodriguez took over with Tacos de Rodriguez after Martinez’s retirement, he might have lasted a bit longer had he kept a couple items from Felipe’s going. Hell, we’ve even considered reaching out to Martinez to get a step-by-step recipe for the no carne burrito, including what vendors he got his foodstuffs from and how he got a simple melange of beans, avocado, rice, lettuce and tomato to taste so goddamned excellent so goddamned always. Instead, we’ve quietly pined (unlike some other people who work at SFR) and longed and searched for a similar eatery to no avail.
So if you wind up reading this somehow, Felipe, please know that there’s a large contingent of Santa Fe folks who wake up every day wanting that no carne only to have our hearts broken when we remember you’ve moved on for good. We get it, we want you to be happy—we miss you. Nobody is quite sure how a simple quesadilla with literally no frills inside save the cheese became quite so revered, but that might have something to do with the old joke about the secret ingredient being love. That shit is true, and when people make food with the best intentions, diners can tell.
Places We Miss
How many restaurants that have been closed for years still have throngs of fans? In Santa Fe? Not many. Sure, we’ve heard a lot of folks talking about how they’ll miss El Farol, which closed not so long ago (though they apparently didn’t care enough to be there all the time or it wouldn’t have closed in the first place).
Certainly there are a small handful, though, right? Right. Like, for example? Tecolote. Y’all remember Tecolote? That brekkie spot that had the bakery baskets and the killer potatoes and the green chile so good we wondered why anyone even bothered with The Pantry down the street? What happened with that? Well, its owners certainly had to roll with the punches when they were forced to move from their original location at Cerrillos Road and Baca Street into the space that now houses Santa Fe Bite. Things seemed to be going OK until the May 2019 Day Without Immigrants action in Santa Fe during which tons of businesses closed in solidarity with immigrants. At the time, Tecolote not only chose to stay open (for which no one faulted them, because the spirit of the action was about “if you can swing it to close,” not hard and fast rules), but they also posted a letter in their window dogging on illegal immigrants, which felt kind of wild on that specific day. You can check that out here. And we can’t say for sure that’s what happened to make them close, but…it likely didn’t help. Still, we wish it hadn’t happened, because we were there most weekends for chile.
And don’t even get us started on Labelle’s (which we might be misspelling as it has been gone for so long), a burrito spot not to be confused with Burrito Spot that once lived inside the little building y’all today know as Bumblebee’s Baja Grill. The operation was small (one lady) and served up some of the best carne adovada we’ve had any place (and SFR staffers love carne adovada). Labelle’s has been closed for, like, 25 years, and we still think about it weekly.
And then just across the street from the former Labelle’s? Bert’s Burger Bowl (now Santa Fe Bees), a restaurant that was a classic burger dive, but also home of the best veggie burger we’ve ever had and the place where you’d go if you thought you could eat six full-sized burgers in under 30 minutes, in which case you’d get them for free. Bert’s closed 10 years ago and, like most of these places we’re discussing, took a little part of Santa Fe with it.
The same thing happened when the original Bobcat Bite shuttered out on Old Las Vegas Highway 10 years back. John and Bonnie Eckre certainly rebuilt as Santa Fe Bite in town (first at the now-some-other-name Garrett’s Desert Inn, which now has that pretty good Chinese spot Zeng, then in the former second Tecolote space on St. Michael’s Drive), but it was never quite the same as it was when Bobcat was the size of a trailer, a bit of a drive and totally perfect as an itsy-bitsy little counter with a table or two. Santa Fe Bite got new owners in 2023 when the current team of Armando Rivas and Angela Mason took over, though John Eckre still cooks from time to time. And while the burger is always pretty dang good over there, those of us who remember the old Bobcat can still tell when Eckre is behind the stove or not.
We’d keep going, but it’s hard to write through the tears. Perhaps this is really about mortality, though we’re pretty sure we can’t die. In any case. Do you think the things that happen to us when we’re young have an impact on us throughout our lives? Nah. Still, we’d love to tell you to smile because it happened rather than bumming because it’s over. It’s just…you know that thing where you chase feels for a lifetime only to never find them? It hurts. Life hurts. Certain burritos and burgers took away some of that hurt, even for a moment. We’ve been to the past. We’ve been to the future. We’ve been all around the afterlife. And all’s we can say is—let’s rock.
This isn’t the first time Cinderella succinctly explained our feelings, and it won’t be the last.
Also
- It would seem that local flamenco impresaria La Emi (aka Emily Grimm) is looking to do a little fundraising for her most excellent EmiArteFlamenco Academy (it’s an academy for flamenco that serves all sorts of ages). How’s she going to do that? And will we stop writing things in question form this week? The first answer is with a dinner/show on Saturday, Dec. 20 at New Mexican joint Tortilla Flats featuring some of that flamenco. The second answer is “no.” How do you get to this incredibly fairly priced at $44.52 event? Click here for tickets.
- As if chefs working in New Mexico (read, Santa Fe) needed more of a reason to get super-fucking weird, the Michelin Guide (you know, the tire company that rates restaurants somehow) has announced it’ll now have a Southwestern guide focused on Arizona, Utah, Nevada and New Mexico. We don’t know how yet, but this is going to piss us off. And it’s going to piss diners off. And that place you love that doesn’t have much of a wait most of the time? Get ready for food tourists with more money than sense mucking it all up. Get ready for idiot writers from faraway lands who NEVER use the word “fuck” coming to town to act like they discovered chile or something. Ugh. We don’t need this shit.
- We happened by CHOMP the other night for a coffee hand with a bud and came across a pop-up from Out of This World Bagel, a bagel that was, indeed, out of this world—at least the kinds we tried. Yes, we’ve seen bagel bizzes flare into existence here and there in Santa Fe before, and yes, we’ve loved some more than others (blah blah blah, shut the hell up, people from New York). The green chile bagel and the blue corn bagel from Out of This World’s Danny [Last Name Ommitted on Their Website]? Revelations, both. We made an egg and bacon sandwich with the green chile one, duh—then we ate the blue corn untoasted over the sink like an animal later that night, because it was just that good. Anyway, go to the Out of This World website to learn more and to get you some. Fingers crossed this is gonna be the bagel thing that sticks.
- We can’t spill the beans just yet, but we do want to say that you might wanna keep your eye on the ever-popular cookie shop Chainé in Santa Fe this week for a little cookie announcement that might have a little something to do with your buds at SFR. Everyone knows The Fork loves Chainé, and not just because she’s the only person in the city who actually knows our identity, but because we love a good cookie. We also assume she has other qualities, but that’s all we’re looking for in someone to love—cookieness. Anyway, stay sharp. What’s to come? Only time will tell.
- Santa Fe's hottest Thai/Malay restaurant Leo's wowed SFR when we sent an emissary, and now Esquire, who named it one of the best new restaurants in all the freaking land. Wow! In your face, every other restaurant!
- Lastly, in more-local-than-not news this week, we’ve just learned about the second annual Christkindlmarkt in Albuquerque, which is slated to go down on Sunday, Dec. 14. What is it? A German-style Christmas market, which means, likely, wooden stalls and sausages and gifts and crafts and goods and sausages and beer and pretzels and vendors and sausages and cookies, cakes, pretzels, sausages and then sausages. We don’t know if there are that many sausages, we just know that German-style Christmas markets are cute as hell. Will it be worth the drive to Albuquerque if you don’t already live there? Probably! Visit the Christkindlmarkt website to decide for yourself.
Here’s more than an hour of German Christmas jamz.
More Tidbits
- Speaking of those Michelin chumps and their Stay Puft Marshmallow Man-looking-ass mascot, it would seem they’re getting into the wine game, too, with a new rating system of Grapes (yes, with a capital G). Cool. More rich bitches celebrating rich bitches who make stuff for rich bitches while the rest of us marvel at that Home Alone scene where Kevin gets a literal fucking grocery cart full of food for less than $20. We don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
- Choco ultra-biz Hershey’s released some kind of Dubai chocolate limited edition thing, according to Delish-dot-com, but there are only like 10,000 of them and it’s apparently a whole thing to get one. Jesus, who cares? Not us. But in case you do, it’s chocolate; it’s pistachio; it’s kadayif; you don’t need it. Who do you think you are? Don Draper weirding out a room of execs with your former poorness? God!
- Lastly in not-just local news, it seems that the Japanese 7-Eleven egg sandwich that everyone online won’t shut up about is making its way to America. Or, maybe it’s already here? It’s hard to tell. We just know that there’s no 7-Eleven in Santa Fe, but we can already imagine our city’s funny little food influencers driving to ABQ to get one and practicing their “Ohmygodyouguyzitwassogood!” voice. Will we eat one? If it appears in our hands, sure, but we can think of not gas station foods we’d prefer. In any event, Japanese convenience stores are better than ours, although we’ve been known to get a brekkie b at Maverik when we’re hard up. Word? Word.
In Summation
Know what our brain reminded us just now? That this isn’t the first time in recent memory we’ve thought about restaurant closures as an analog for our impending death (it’s not soon, but as Cake says, as soon as you’re born we start dying, so we might as well have a good time). Perhaps it’s just a wistful time of year and we’re becoming one of those people who gets all Dylan Thomas-core out there in December like, “And I remember that on the afternoon of Christmas Day, when the others sat around the fire and told each other that this was nothing, no, nothing, to the great snowbound and turkey-proud yule-log-crackling holly-berry-bedizined and kissing-under-the-mistletoe Christmas when they were children.” But, like that kid from that Thomas story (we think it was called The Christmas That Just Would Not Freaking Quit), we, too, keep putting on our mittens and hitting them mean streets looking for cats at which to chuck snowballs—by which we obviously mean we’re passing the open windows, baby. Now that we’ve proven our lit bonafides with our dumbass writing, we do have some actual advice: If you’re lucky enough to have loved ones around this year, give ’em a hug and a snug. Then eat together. No, it won’t be Felipe’s Tacos good, but you’ll be alright.
