Santa Fe Restaurants

Santa Fe Restaurant Reviews

Eating out is a major pastime in Santa Fe and it's well worth coming here with a mind to join in on the fun. Restaurants with high-profile chefs stand beside low-key joints, many offering unique and intriguing variations on regional and international cuisine. You'll find restaurants full of locals and tourists alike all over the Downtown and surrounding areas. Although Santa Fe does have some high-end restaurants where dinner for two can easily exceed $200, the city also has plenty of reasonably priced dining options.

Waits for tables are very common during the busy summer season, so it's a good idea to call ahead even when reservations aren't accepted, if only to get a sense of the waiting time. Reservations for dinner at the better restaurants are a must in summer and on weekends the rest of the year.

So-called Santa Fe-style cuisine has so many influences that the term is virtually meaningless. Traditional, old-style Santa Fe restaurants serve New Mexican fare, which combines both Native American and Hispanic traditions and is quite different from Americanized or even authentic Mexican cooking. Many of the better restaurants in town serve a contemporary regional style of cooking that blends New Mexican ingredients and preparations with those of interior and coastal Mexico, Latin America, the Mediterranean, East Asia, and varied parts of the United States.

For a city this small, there is a delightful array of cuisines available aside from the delicious and spicy food of northern New Mexico: Middle Eastern, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, East Indian, and French, to name just a few. More and more restaurants, from casual lunch joints to the finest dining establishments, are focusing on using local and regional ingredients, from meats, to cheeses, to produce. Smoking was recently banned in all bars and restaurants in the city, infuriating some and thrilling many.