Restaurants in Santa Fe, NM

Southwestern cuisine got stylish in Santa Fe, starting in the 1970s when chef Mark Miller opened the Coyote Cafe, which offered contemporary takes on traditional dishes. Decades later, the Coyote Cafe continues to thrive… along with many relatively new restaurants that take advantage of native ingredients to create stylish variations of the classics. Santacafe is one of the best, seasoning local tradition with an Asian touch. On and around the Plaza at the heart of town, you will find Roque’s Carnitas selling a magnificent tortilla roll-up of char-cooked beef and peppers; the old Five & Dime, the lunch counter of which is alleged to be the place cook Teresa Hernandez first conceived the Frito Pie; and the Plaza Cafe, which has town lunchroom atmosphere that defies gentrification all around it and serves a menu that combines flavors of the Southwest in general, New Mexico in particular, and a few Greek specialties, too. No visit to “The City Different” is complete without a meal (or two or three) at Pasqual’s, a favorite corner eatery for decades, where the corned beef hash is superb and the hot chocolate is radiant with Mexican seasonings.

Santa Fe’s Most Famous Dishes

Cross section of a buned rare burger topped with chopped green chilies and cheese

Green Chile Cheeseburger

Kielbasa soup with tortellini & greens

Soups

Scrambled eggs laced with peppers and onions, topped with salsa

Huevos Rancheros

Crisp circular potato chips on a red-checked tablecloth

Chips

Santa Fe’s Best Restaurants

Santa Fe Tortilla Company - Tortillas
Santa Fe Tortilla Company

SANTA FE, NM

Five and Dime General Store - Frito Pie
Five and Dime General Store

SANTA FE, NM

San Marcos Cafe - Cinnamon Bun
San Marcos Cafe

SANTA FE, NM

Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen

SANTA FE, NM

Santacafé

SANTA FE, NM

Plaza Café

SANTA FE, NM

Roque’s Carnitas

SANTA FE, NM

Tecolote

SANTA FE, NM

Pasqual’s - Huevos Motulenos
Pasqual’s

SANTA FE, NM

Shake Foundation

SANTA FE, NM

Harry’s Roadhouse

SANTA FE, NM

Tesuque Village Market

SANTA FE, NM

El Parasol

SANTA FE, NM

The Shed

SANTA FE, NM

Santa Fe Bite - Green Chile Cheeseburger
Santa Fe Bite

SANTA FE, NM

Santa Fe Articles & Guides

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Still Saucy After All These Years

In 1901, there were fewer than 7,000 cars on America’s roads. Just 40 years later, Duncan Hines’s guidebook Adventures in Good Eating was pinpointing hundreds of gems worthy of a detour....

Pancakes

Pancakes make people happy. Arriving at the table in the form of short stacks or lofty towers, or fanned out like a haul of soft gold medallions, they are...

Santa Fe Bite - Green Chile Cheeseburger

Santa Fe

As pilgrims on the road of reprobate gastronomy, we encounter all sorts of green chile cheeseburgers (henceforth referred to as GCCBs) at drive-ins and truck-stops throughout the Southwest. But...

On the Santa Fe Plaza

The vendor wars have ended in Santa Fe. Calm reigns on the Plaza, where, seven years ago, the lady with the churros wagon so resented the competition from Speedy...

Road trip through New Mexico | What to eat

Road trip through New Mexico Take a road trip and eat your way through El Camino Real "The Royal Road" through New Mexico. In addition to spectacular natural beauty, you...

Route 66: Texas and New Mexico Edition

The drive along old Route 66 from the Texas Panhandle to the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico is a pageant of natural splendor and...

New Mexico Roadfood Tour 2010

A visit to New Mexico during the height of chile season takes us from Albuquerque, where the State Fair is underway, north to magical city of Santa Fe, then...

The One Must-Eat Food in Each State, and Where To Get It

Unique Regional Dishes After 40 years and 5 million miles spent on the road looking for America's best regional food, we've assembled a list of the quintessential, must-eat food in...

12 Breakfast Destinations in the West | Roadfood Bests

As breathtaking as a western sunset is, western breakfast can be every bit as beautiful. Sunrise never tasted better than it does at any one of these dozen breakfast...

Double bacon cheeseburger, fully dressed

13 Best Places to Eat a Burger Outside this Summer

Burgers in the Open Air Hamburgers are good year-round, but there’s special pleasure in having one en plein air on a summer day. Check out these baker’s-dozen Roadfood favorite restaurants serving the...

Santa Fe in a Day

Santa Fe's bounty of good food merits at least a week of eating ... or two or three weeks, or more. But let's say you have just one day...

Paper-thin crepes, dusted with powdered sugar, envelop bananas, walnuts, maple syrup and brown sugar

Brunchtime

Why is brunch so wonderful? One, it almost always includes adult beverages. Two, it's far more bountiful than either breakfast or lunch. Three, there's no hurry to eat it:...

Peach Desserts

There are few pleasures in life more sensuously delicious than sinking teeth into a perfectly ripe peach to let its juicy, sugared sunshine flood over taste buds. Because their...

Urban Burgers

We Americans love our hamburgers, at home and on the road. From mischievous fried sliders to majestic beef pillows oozing juice over coals, burgers are a birthright coast to...

Five and Dime General Store - Frito Pie

Frito Pie Quest

Fritos were created in San Antonio in 1932, but it took some thirty years before the Frito pie was born. Teresa Hernandez, working behind the Woolworth's lunch counter in...

Granola is loaded with nuts, berries, raisins, coconut, etc., etc.

Granola Greats, Coast to Coast

Granola first was invented in the 1860s (not the 1960s) and eaten by health nuts of the day. It was a severe dish made from nothing but double-baked sheets...

A plat of sopaipillas at Nellie's restaurant in Las Cruces, NM

Sopaipilla Quest

Sopaipillas are are made from dough that is rolled out very thin, cut into small sections, then tossed into boiling oil, preferably lard. The lard makes the pieces of...

Taco Temple Combo Plate

Chile Rellenos

At their best, made from roasted chilies that still have muscular vegetable walls, stuffed with cream-rich molten cheese and haloed in a coat of featherweight batter fried to a...

Santa Fe Bite - Green Chile Cheeseburger

New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburgers

Although it isn't shaped like one, this is our kind of food pyramid, containing protein in the form of meat and cheese, vegetables (green chile and maybe onions, too),...

Great Santa Fe Recipes

Santa Fe Carnitas

Caramelized Onion Quesadilla

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