Check out the article in the New Mexican about the Green Owl below.

Green Owl aims to revitalize St. Michael’s Drive food scene

By: Candelora Versace | For The New Mexican

April 12th, 2012

With its aging fast-food franchises and worn-out convenience stores, St. Michael’s Drive may not be the first place Santa Feans think of as a mealtime destination. Scattered among the car dealers and empty storefronts, the handful of midprice restaurants along the road are often forgotten by being “out of sight, out of mind.”

Bill Healy, owner of the Green Owl, hopes to change that with his high-profile gas station remodel on the south side of the busy thoroughfare. After an extensive renovation, the space now gleams as a cafe with shiny surfaces and a menu of comfort-food classics. Along with breakfast and lunch menus, the eatery also offers fresh-baked pastries, breads and pretzel rolls, as well as Agapao coffee and Hawaiian-style, soft-serve ice cream.

“I thought maybe it was time to retire,” Healy said as he recounted his decades-long career as a professional baker and cafe owner in Long Island, N.Y. He spent the last 10 years or so coming to Santa Fe to visit his daughters, who now live in Albuquerque, so frequently that he considers the Inn and Spa at Loretto his second home.

“I got an offer for my business in New York, and thought maybe I’d look for a hole-in-the-wall space just to keep busy,” he said.

That search took two years, he said. His son-in-law, a physician at the former St. Vincent Hospital, frequently mentioned the lack of food options on St. Michael’s Drive. The more he researched the area, the more Healy became convinced that the location would be ideal for a culinary endeavor.

“I saw the need for our concept,” Healy said of his vision for fresh, high-quality baked goods, light meals and coffee. The breakfast menu includes breakfast burritos, bagels or rolls topped with eggs and cheese, and baked goods including muffins, morning buns and danishes. The lunch options include: individual pizzas, wraps, paninis, sandwiches, salads and soups.

Healy also offers what may be the only pretzel-roll “snackwich” in Santa Fe. He said he spent two months in Germany perfecting the combination of pretzel and bread for his pretzel rolls. “It’s low in carbs and fat and has such a unique taste.”

While the cafe does not source many of its foods locally, Healy and manager Cindy Sheptow said they are working to scout local vendors for their food sources. “We’re happy to use as many local products as we can find,” Healy said, noting that he’s already in discussion with a local produce farmer.

As for coffee, Healy said he has spent 40 years in the coffee business, starting with Chock Full o’Nuts (“the official coffee of the city that never sleeps”), and he’s confident about his choice.

“I know coffee, and I can’t speak highly enough of Agapao coffee and David Black,” Healy said. “He came out with a special blend for us. He really knows coffee; he may even be a step ahead of me. And the best part is, he’s local and he’s good people.”

Sheptow, formerly the pastry chef at Santacafé, agrees. “I’ve been a coffee snob for 40 years myself,” she said. “It’s clean coffee, it has no aftertaste, and we have some [talented] baristas.”

After eight months of renovation, Healy said, the cafe opened in early February. The building was so decrepit, he said, that it had to be completely gutted and rebuilt, including the wiring and plumbing. “It needed a lot of work,” he said.

After sifting through more than 100 applications, Healy hired 15 workers and has since let one go.

“We love the staff, we love the people that work here,” he said. “People always say that there’s a problem getting good workers here, but we think that’s wrong, dead wrong. We want the residents of the St. Mike’s area to have a nice place to come to, and we’ve already succeeded.”

With a comfortable patio, indoor seating and a drive-thru lane, not to mention eventual catering and delivery, Healy fully intends his big investment to pay off. Healy is so confident in his experience of providing good food and coffee with service to match that he’s already opened a satellite cafe inside the Inn and Spa at Loretto.

“It’s such a great hotel. I’ve been talking to them about it for a while, and a space finally became available,” he said. “We bake everything here and run it downtown. Hopefully, we’ll make a very good team.”

IF YOU GO

Where: 1698 St. Michael’s Drive

Link to the New Mexican Article HERE.

Contact Matt Desmond and Ryan Bolton

Located on Water street for as long as we can remember, The Catamount Bar and Grill is moving to the Railyard District and will occupy the space formerly known as The Railyard Restaurant (La Stazione). The owners of the Catamount have already begun an extensive renovation of the old Railyard space, and are slated to open by April or May. This weekend will be the last dates they will be open in the former space. 

Serving great beer and food, the Catamount has historically been known as the best bar in Santa Fe to watch a game or catch an occasional show. They also host trivia nights and always run specials on party holidays and big game days (i.e. St. Patricks Day/Superbowl). The new space in the Railyard should be suited even better for the Catamounts’ needs as there is ample parking, outdoor seating, and a newly renovated interior.

So, stop by the new Catamount in a couple of months. You may just find two tired realtors telling stories of the big fish they just caught.

Contact Ryan Bolton and Matt Desmond

This week’s New Mexican has a good profile on Slurp. Check out the full article below:

By Nico Roesler in The New Mexican

With Christmas carols long gone and the cheers of New Year’s Eve surviving as hazy moments in some people’s memories, a new sound is taking over the streets of downtown Santa Fe. Long slurps of homemade soup deliver a wholesome aural experience for those who can trace this noise back to its source.

Just west of the state Capitol on Galisteo Street shines an American symbol of freedom — a refurbished 1967 Airstream trailer. In this case, it is Slurp, a symbol of culinary freedom and soup sovereignty, the first one of its kind (licensed kind, anyway) in Santa Fe. “You can’t get more nutrition than in a homemade soup,” head Chef Jean-Luc Salles said about his soups, which have been ladled out at Slurp since November.

Salles and partners Frances Salles, Carlos Briceno and Rebecca Chastenet bring diverse backgrounds and experiences to their Slurp venture, which originated when Briceno resurrected the Airstream after purchasing it from a seller in Cañoncito. Briceno and his enterprising friends knew they wanted to open an eatery, and the Airstream provided a blank canvas. “It wasn’t going to be a restaurant, it was going to be something fun that we could play with,” Briceno said of the concept.

Chef Salles hails from Bordeaux, France, and brings classical culinary training as well as 30 years in the restaurant business to this comfy camper. Briceno, from Caracas, Venezuela, made his way into the culinary business after stints in graphic design, home building and reconstruction. Chastenet got involved after writing as a food critic and co-author of four cookbooks.

Their mission: simple, fast and wholesome food at an affordable price.

Under a huge, rusted-looking spoon bolted to the top of the trailer like an antenna, their mission begins each morning when Briceno arrives at 5:30 a.m. and starts baking fresh focaccia bread in a small convection oven.

Slurp offers simple breakfasts such as warm croissants with ham and a Tortilla Española — a rib-sticking combination of potatoes, onions and locally sourced eggs. The trio have been working with the Santa Fe Alliance to create a menu that is as locally sourced as possible.

Chef Salles then arrives at 7:30 a.m. to prepare the soups of the day. Slurp offers three soups a day, averaging about 15 different soups per week. Each weekday, Salles prepares 12 gallons of soup in the small trailer heated by bubbling broths. Soup aficionados can look for a daily trio of soups: a vegetarian option, such as their lentil/spinach soup, a hormone- and antibiotic-free meat offering, such as their wild-boar posole, and a cream soup, such as their celery/bleu cheese soup. Each slurp-able item comes in an Earth-friendly bowl ranging from 12 to 32 ounces. One component they are working on is finding an organic spoon that won’t disintegrate in the steamy soups.

“When they have their first cup of our soup, they become attached,” Chef Salles said of his customers.

Although Salles says some of his soups aren’t at the level he would like them to be (chefs tend to be perfectionists), Slurp’s business is meeting and surpassing his expectations. Success came without any advertising besides Facebook and Twitter pages, which update the soups that will be offered each day. The reputation of their soups has spread by word — or slurp — of mouth alone.

“A lot of the same people actually come every day,” Briceno said. “Others that come may be tourists, or just a friend of a friend who heard about us.” Recently, two of the daily soups have run out before closing time. Salles says Slurp will stock up more in the coming weeks because of the legislative session, which begins Jan. 18.

After being denied a parking space at various locations, Slurp finally found its niche and has been anchored at the same location for a few months. If things continue to go well for the cooks as they squeeze by each other in their 8-foot-by-27-foot kitchen, they plan to open a second mobile kitchen with a different concept.

As for Slurp, it’s now venturing into other dishes besides soup. It offers a pulled-pork sandwich and will soon have a mac-and-cheese dish. As Salles describes it, Slurp is a chameleon-type of eatery. He says he and his partners in chrome will have to adapt when summer comes around and offer more seasonal dishes.

This Airstream eatery isn’t a new concept to cities like Austin, Texas; Los Angeles; New York; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle, where these shiny silver bullets can be spotted everywhere filling stomachs with healthier, more affordable, oftentimes quicker meal options. But “for the people of Santa Fe to have something different,” Briceno said, “it gives more ambience, a more out-of-the-box mentality, and that is needed.” He hopes more unique food dispensaries start popping up around town.

 Click Here for the Original Article

Contact Matt Desmond and Ryan Bolton

Max’s opened in late 2007 and has been building a solid reputation in Santa Fe and beyond ever since. The owner, Max (Maxine), and chef, Brian Rood have created a menu that specializes in sustainable and locally farmed meats and produce. The atmosphere is cozy, sophisticated, yet casual, and certainly has an intimate feel.

A sample of menu items include:

Starters:

• Caramelized Onion and Red Potato Soup with Crouton 
• Hong Kong Style Shrimp with Saifun Noodles in Spicy Chile-Leek Ragout with Fried
• Shallot and Broccoli Florets
• Certified Organic, Grass Fed River Canyon Ranch Beef
• Grilled Sirloin Salad with Crouton and Charred Red Onion and Lime Vinaigrette
•  Homemade Duck Confit and Field Green Salad with Herbed Crouton, Roasted Shallot and Red Wine Vinaigrette
• Field Green Salad with Homemade Applewood Smoked Bacon, Local Farm Eggand Creamy Tarragon Vinaigrette

Mains:

• “Cassoulet”; Homemade Duck Confit, Slow Braised Pork Shoulder, Homemade Apple Wood Smoked Bacon, White Beans, Roasted Mirepoix and Parmesan Bread Crumbs
• Certified Organic, Grass Fed River Canyon Ranch Beef; Dry Aged Sirloin Coulotte with Heirloom Baby Carrots, Marinated Grilled Rapini, Fried Shallot and Veal Pan Sauce
• Pan-Seared Red Grouper with Red Potatoes, Braised Kale, Pickled Red Onion, Carrot Leafand Toasted Coriander-Lime Vinaigrette
• Certified Organic, Grass Fed Shepherd’s Lamb; Grilled Lamb Chop and Leg with Grilled Rapini, Roasted Oyster Mushroom Sweet Onion-Potato Confit, Fresh Herbs and Cider Gastrique
• Roasted Green Chile Shrimp and Grits with Homemade Apple Wood Smoked Bacon, Roasted Garlic and Mirepoix
• Vegetarian Homemade Semolina Pappardelle Pasta with Seasonal Vegetables in White Wine Cream Sauce 

When dining there last night I had the spectacular lamb dish, and my dining partner, Jerry, had the sea scallops (not listed on the menu above). The lamb was perfectly prepared, and the accompaniments were a perfect compliment to this rich dish.  The scallops, a somewhat lighter dish, were very fresh, and melted in your mouth. We both started with the field green salad, and, of course, had a nice bottle of Pinot Noir.

From the atmosphere to the food, everything at Max’s was fantastic.  I would highly recommend this restaurant to locals and visitors alike. They are open 7 nights a week from 5:30 to 9:00, and reservations are recommended, especially on weekends.  For more information on Max’s, click on the link below.

Max’s Restaurant

Contact Ryan Bolton and Matt Desmond

Santa Fe New Mexican Article:

Culinary crescendo: Restaurant Week to debut in Santa FeEvent featuring lower-priced meals, cooking demonstrations and workshops puts spotlight on food industry

Arin McKenna | For The New Mexican

It’s no secret that Santa Fe’s restaurants have been looking for ways to boost business in the late winter months.

In fact, last September they agreed to work toward holding a winter fiesta in 2011. But that was before Michele Ostrove, president of Wings Media Network, a public-relations and marketing firm, and her husband, Lucien Bonnafoux, stepped in and advanced the timetable.

A month after the meeting, the couple pitched the idea of New Mexico Restaurant Week to local restaurateurs, hoteliers and representatives from key tourism agencies.

“We had been talking about a winter/spring event that would feature the restaurants of Santa Fe and promote them at a time when typically it’s not very busy,” said Jeff Jinnett, president of the Santa Fe Restaurant Association.

The idea took off. Next week, about 40 restaurants in Santa Fe — and the week after, some 20 in the Albuquerque area — will be offering lower-priced meals to diners, as well as cooking demonstrations, workshops and wine and beer tastings.

In Santa Fe, the event lasts from Sunday through March 6 locally and from March 7-13 in Albuquerque.

Ostrove and Bonnafoux, co-founders of Wine Adventure, a wine magazine for women, moved to Santa Fe in 2008 from San Diego, where they said Restaurant Week was so successful that it’s now a twice-a-year event. “They started with 60 restaurants and they’re now up to 180 to 220, depending on the season,” Ostrove said. “It just seemed like it was a natural to bring to New Mexico.”

The key players agreed. “I thought it was a hot idea,” said Restaurant Association Secretary Michael O’Reilly. Officials at the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta, whose goal is to promote Santa Fe as a culinary destination, also signed on.

The boards of both organizations promoted the event to members and agreed to subsidize them. Participating restaurants pay $500 to cover the cost of organizing and marketing the event. The fiesta offered to pay $250 of that cost for all its 2009 participants. And the Restaurant Association contributed $50 toward the entrance fees of its members.

“My hope is that events like this will get the restaurant community more united,” Jinnett said. “There are 200-plus restaurants in Santa Fe, and together we have a very powerful voice, but it’s been difficult to organize. I think the more of these types of events that we can do to get the restaurateurs to unite for a common cause is good for any type of organization.”

Simon Brackley, president and CEO of the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, which is distributing information about the event to members and visitors, called Restaurant Week “a good example of a collaborative effort to create something new in challenging economic times.”

Although there are fewer participating restaurants in Albuquerque, that city is also trying to build culinary tourism, according to Tania Armenta, vice president of marketing for the Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We hosted our first culinary press trip in November and had journalists come out specifically to cover the area from the culinary aspect, and we talked about Restaurant Week,” she said.

Gov. Bill Richardson and the New Mexico Tourism Department also are backing the event. “Offering something new and fresh and bringing people during a time when they typically aren’t coming in droves” is important to the state’s economy, said Jennifer Hobson, deputy secretary for the New Mexico Tourism Department. Tourism, she pointed out, is a $5.5 billion business in the state, second to oil and gas.

The Tourism Department is supporting Restaurant Week through a link on its Web site, www.newmexico.org, which gets about 150,000 hits per month. (Hobson is blogging about the event there as well.)

Launching a new event when the economy is depressed might seem risky, but Michel Darmon, director of food and beverage for Terra at Encantado, said, “I think that when we look back at it in the next few years we’ll go, ‘Wow, this is one of the great decisions of Santa Fe.’ ”

Although many anticipate limited success the first year, they expect to see the event’s popularity grow rapidly. “If it works as well as we believe it will, I think everybody will want to be in on the next one,” Ostrove said. “And I’m really grateful for the people who did take the leap of faith this time and come aboard.”

“I’m hoping that when the dust settles at the end of the week, the overall feedback from the restaurants is, ‘I’m really glad that I participated. It was fun, the staff enjoyed it, we had a lot of people who had not been to our restaurant before that are now exposed to it and we can’t wait for next year,’ ” Jinnett said. “And my hope is that the restaurants that didn’t participate because they were skeptical go, ‘Wow, we really missed out, and we’re not going to miss out next time.’ ”

Bonnafoux said the next Restaurant Week could be as early as November. “I like to let the train get going down the tracks before we pull the switch,” he said. “We want to get the statistics first, but we believe this one will be so successful that it will warrant another in early November.”

Link To Original Article Here

Contact Ryan Bolton and Matt Desmond

The business is owned by partners Dennis Dampf and Don Scharhag, who have owned the restaurant for the last 27 years. “This has lasted longer than any of my marriages,” Dampf said Wednesday evening. “Don and I like to say we’ve only raised our voices to each other twice in 27 years.

“When asked about the reasons for the closure, Dampf declined to disclose them, other than to say it was partly due to difficult times in the restaurant business, which have seen fewer people eating out and more eating at home. “Business has been slow,” Dampf said. “That’s one reason for it.” Scharhag couldn’t be reached for comment.

A statement Dampf e-mailed to The New Mexican said in part, “owners Don Scharhag and Dennis Dampf are announcing the end of an era … many thanks to our loyal customers and wonderful staff. Don and Dennis hope to see as many folks as we can until the Jan. 24 closing. “Again a sincere thanks goes out to everyone for supporting us these past 27 years.”

El Nido restaurant and bar has enjoyed a long and colorful history, starting out in the 1920s as a roadhouse and dance hall known for its jukebox and lively tunes. “We heard it was a house of ill repute,” Dampf said.

The restaurant changed ownership many times over the years. It was owned from 1962 to 1976 by the politically prominent Arias family. Steve Arias couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday evening.

The murals famed artist Will Schuster painted at El Nido eventually ended up at the state Capitol building, Dampf said.

Santa Fe author Pen La Farge mentions El Nido several times in his book about Santa Fe, Turn Left at the Sleeping Dog, focusing on the restaurant’s colorful history in the 1930s and 1940s. “There weren’t many places in Santa Fe to go for entertainment, either bars or restaurants or dance halls,” La Farge said in a 2002 interview. “The two main ones were La Fonda and, going out of town, El Nido.” El Nido, La Farge continued, “as I understand it, based on implications from the way people speak about it, started off as a dance hall and went through various incarnations, including as a restaurant and as a brothel.”

El Nido became a popular spot for celebrities, including Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Randy Travis. Locals gathered there for birthdays, anniversaries and other celebrations. Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory tended to gather there, a tradition that started during World War II, when, rumor had it, more secrets were whispered on the dance floor at El Nido than spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg could have imagined.

El Nido was also popular with opera-goers because of the restaurant’s proximity to the Santa Fe Opera. “We’re well-known for getting people to the opera on time,” Scharhag said in a 2002 interview.

Flamenco dancer María Benítez began performing at El Nido in 1970.

Scharhag and Dampf moved to Santa Fe from New York in the 1970s, and both ended up working at The Steaksmith when it was at the former DeVargas Hotel, now the Hotel St. Francis. “At that time, The Steaksmith was the busiest restaurant in all of Northern New Mexico,” Dampf said. “The opportunity came along to take over El Nido, and we went for it.” Starting in December 1981, they spent several months remodeling the 7,000-square-foot building but not making too many changes to the adobe structure, which was apparently built in the ’20s or ’30s with additions over the years. “We wanted to keep the character of the building,” Scharhag said. “We did add some partition walls and retiled some of the floor and added the back bar.”

El Nido had been serving Northern New Mexican food, but the partners changed that, switching to steak and seafood. To this day, other than appetizers, they have only one New Mexican dish on their menu, a green-chile enchilada. “We were the first restaurant in Santa Fe to dabble with expensive fish, like sole, halibut and salmon,” Scharhag said. “We realized we were dealing with a diet-conscious community, and fish was a big part of that.”

The menu has remained pretty much the same over the years. “It’s a good, solid menu with quality food,” Scharhag said. “We’ve never tried to be trendy. Compared to a lot of other restaurants, I think we really give good value.”

Another big part of El Nido is its service, which Dampf and Scharhag oversaw themselves — at least one of them was on hand the six days per week the restaurant is open. And they weren’t just sitting at the bar schmoozing with customers — they took orders, cleared tables and even washed dishes.

Bob Quick | The New Mexican