One Restaurant in Santa Fe
 

We are heading to a friend's wedding in Galisteo, NM on the 9/23. We are staying at the Inn of the Governors in Santa Fe and will need one restaurant option for Friday night, the 21st. There have been a lot of posts, but there are also so many choices.....it's hard to narrow down.

There will probably be six of us looking for some good food, but not too fancy. We will likely be dining at either the Shed or its sister restaurant on Saturday night with the wedding party, so that would be excluded. An outdoor patio would be nice, but is not a necessity. I think we would probably avoid a place like Coyote Cafe as it sounds very tourist-y. Any ideas on a good eatery for six?

http://www.santacafe.com/
Nice patio, good food, nice but not too fancy. Make reservations now!

Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Great food. Fun place. Pretty casual, though.

Here's a good thread for you to read -- especially about chilly nights. It has been getting for the last week or so, so bring a sweater if you do eat outside.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35004567

I think the Cowgirl Hall of Fame is a fun place to eat with good food [not great] and for a six folks in a celebratory state of mind [the wedding] it would be a good pick.

Hope this helps..
Debi

Thank you all for the responses.

Cowgirl Hall of Fame may be a tad too casual for what we are looking.

It is so hard to please six palates.

All these restaurants have really good food:
la boca--tapas a speciality but also dinner entrees http://www.santafe.com/sfrestaurants/110/
Trattoria Nostrani--nothern Italian--http://www.trattorianostrani.com/
Geronimo--eclectic--http://www.geronimorestaurant.com/
The Compound--classic--http://www.compoundrestaurant.com/indexmain.html

Thanks all. I think we have narrowed it down to Geronimo, Santacafe, or The Compound. I will let you know what we all decide.....so far, Geronimo is leading.

Well, it ended up being four people at Geronimo on Friday night. It was divine. Would highly recommend.....

Just for the record we had our worst meal in Santa Fe at Geronimo. Probably a fluke, but all three of us ordered rack of lamb rare, and it came out VERY well done. We politely sent it back, as the waiter first tried to tell us that lamb shouldn't be cooked rare, but finally gave in and let out a big sigh and returned them to the kitchen. As I recall, he even muttered under his breath "whatever. . .". We waited and waited and then he brought them out. They were beyond rare -- the centers were FROZEN hard. Finally the waiter rather rudely told us it was hard to do frozen racks of lamb rare and we should have kept our first ones. Obviously we couldn't eat them, but made do with our sides and desserts (which were all wonderful by the way). There was no offer to bring us anything else or take them off the bill. When we asked about the charge, we were told "you insisted on rare and that's what you got".

Oh, Neo, that was a fluke! What a horrible waiter you had!! It is a fabulous restaurant with great service. Albeit, all places will have a bad night/bad waiter every now and then.

Lizzie, I'm so glad you had a great time at Geronimo. It's one of our favorites. Heading there next weekend!!

<i>Heading there next weekend!!</i>

Rub it in, will ya BeachGirl? ;-) Wouldn't ya know it though, just as soon as I stop experiencing withdrawals from that charred tomato salsa, my wife says we HAVE to return to Santa Fe next year. Oh, the horrors!

We had a great meal at Pink Adobe.

We had wonderful food at The Compound. Best of all, our party of 5 could carry on a conversation. None of that are we having fun yet atmosphere you sometimes get in popular restaurants. Our best evening in Santa Fe.

Has anyone recently dined in Ristra? We had a lovely dinner there several years ago and was wondering if it is still good. I never see it mentioned on Santa Fe recs here though.

Beachgirl, yes we went to Geronimo because it was so highly recommended, so I suspect it was not the norm. But it was more than the horrible waiter we had. How bad does a kitchen have to be to send out well done rack of lamb for rare, and then to send them out the second time frozen in the middle? So the night we were there, not only was it a bad waiter, but the kitchen was off too.