Turning on a dime

Restaurants that survived the pandemic

Last spring, as COVID-19 swept across the nation, restaurant dining rooms all over Santa Fe shut their doors in accordance with statewide health orders. Most businesses were forced to adapt to survive, offering takeout only in the earliest days of the pandemic and pivoting again and again in the wake of ever-changing government mandates. Luckily — thanks to their resilience, flexibility, creativity and determination — many of the city’s beloved businesses endured. Bienvenidos takes a look at a few of the diehards and how they kept chugging along, month after month.

“If we can’t do it in the best way possible, we don’t want to do it,” says Jennifer Finn Rios, general manager of Restaurant Martín and the wife of chef Martín Rios — who has been recognized multiple times by the James Beard Foundation. After several pivots and a decent summer of meals on the restaurant’s big, beautiful patio in 2020, business dropped off when colder weather arrived. Accordingly, the kitchen shifted into an entirely new gear, finding a way to offer to-go options while maintaining very high standards of quality. The chefs created the immediately popular Build-a-bowl, an online platform that allowed diners to order customizable takeout bowls — one of the biggest food trends of late — choosing their own protein, bases like noodles and rice, veggies, toppings, glazes and sauces. The innovation and dedication to quality succeeded. “It just took off,” Finn Rios says. Build-a-bowl served the Santa Fe community until late March 2021. On April 1, the restaurant reopened for on-site dinner service Wednesdays through Sundays. And while dinner and dessert are still also available to go, custom personal bowls have given way to Beard-worthy plates like Rios’ asparagus salad with goat cheese panna cotta, honey-pepper vinaigrette, fresh strawberries, strawberry chips and charred onion crumble.

NOTE: While the details in this story were accurate and up to date at publication time, rules and restrictions may have changed in the ensuing months and may continue to evolve as the summer progresses. Before venturing out, be sure to call restaurants to confirm their operating days and hours.

Bingeing on Netflix, Hulu and other platforms rapidly became a de rigueur distraction and entertainment during the pandemic — and Arroyo Vino, a fine-dining destination and wine shop on the edge of Las Campanas, hopped on that bandwagon with periodic themed “Dinner and a Movie” takeout options, each paired to fit the chosen film’s theme. Chef Allison Jenkins’ shrimp and grits, and banana pudding, accompanied the Deep South-set O Brother, Where Art Thou? (and could be paired with Grüner Veltliner from the wine shop). The idea attempted to scratch an itch we were all having: the longing for communal dining, knowing you’re sharing dishes and watching a film with at least a few fellow diners and cinephiles. The restaurant now offers takeout and limited indoor dining five nights a week. The regularly changing seasonal menu features seared Long Island duck breast served with forbidden rice and five-spice carrot purée, and hand-rolled whole-wheat garganelli with fava beans, ramps, duck egg and guanciale.

“At first it was shocking to see the dining room empty,” says Annamaria Brezna of Dolina Café & Bakery. “We really had to brace ourselves for this unknown new reality we were living in. Mostly, we missed our community.” And Santa Fe missed Dolina. PRE-COVID, the popular spot for breakfast, brunch and lunch was nearly always teeming with enthusiastic diners sitting shoulder to shoulder, noshing on fried chicken and waffles, goulash (Brezna hails from Slovakia), salads and beautiful pastries. “We were lucky,” she adds, “because from the beginning we were set up as a to-go-friendly business, with our pastry case and takeout-friendly foods.”

“On a positive note,” she says, the lockdown “forced me to . . . get my website together to take online orders. Now we’re doing many more takeout orders, and I hope that continues even when we resume ‘normal’ again.” Brezna recognizes that “things are constantly changing. I hope to get to a point when we all feel safe again to gather. . . . That’s one of my favorite things about having a restaurant — bringing people together.”

While takeout was a big change for James Campbell Caruso and the kitchen at La Boca, which is widely loved and lauded for its innovative tapas, he admits that during the pandemic, the restaurant simply learned how to do it better. “I like the takeout thing now. It makes people happy.”

Another adaptation that helped La Boca survive was the creation of sidewalk seating. The new setup co-opts a parking space immediately in front of the restaurant, but La Boca is working with the city to make it a more permanent fixture, and Campbell Caruso hopes to strike a deal to add a second space.

Some favorite La Boca tapas — such as the uber comfort food patatas bravas — can certainly be successfully enjoyed from the safety of your couch. However, there’s nothing quite like sitting at one of the restaurant’s chic wood tables and enjoying the aroma of orange zest and mint atop just-grilled artichokes. While you’re at it, you can raise a glass of on-tap manzanilla sherry and toast to the health of your fellow diners with a hearty “Salud!” — from behind your mask, of course.

Much like many other restaurateurs in Santa Fe and across the country, chef Patrick Lambert of Cowgirl found out that restaurants often lose more money staying open than by closing temporarily. Cowgirl did some serious soul searching when the pandemic began. “Sales were down 60 percent overnight,” Lambert explains, due to lost revenue from almost-nightly musical acts, the pool hall, the family-friendly Kiddie Corral and a bustling catering business. Directors made the decision to shut the doors in mid-november. Cowgirl reopened at the beginning of March this year, and almost immediately Santa Feans flocked back to enjoy the sunshine on one of the city’s best patios, almost as though things had never changed. But of course they had. Referring to the pivot as “the COVID lemonade,” Lambert says, “We changed the way we’re running our business. . . . We have an unbelievable staff with hearts of gold,” adding that every decision is made with an eye toward Cowgirl’s role in the community. “We have a choice in how to respond to this,” he muses. “We can restructure our lives in a more positive way. It’s uplifting. I feel really hopeful.”

Plaza Café Southside has long been one of the city’s most popular destinations, with an extensive menu that offers something for diners of all ages. This family-focused thinking helped the restaurant adapt to Covid-related restrictions. It offered the usual menu for both delivery and curbside takeout — one of our orders this spring, PCS’S seriously craveable fish tacos, arrived with a “side” of a handwritten thank-you note from general manager Belinda Marshall.

The kitchen also added meal kits to the takeout menu, with all the necessities to create crispy norteño tacos or Frito pies at home, with extras like beans and rice or chips and salsa. The calabacitas casserole easily serves four and includes all the standard accompaniments — beans, rice, chips and salsa. Corn and flour tortillas are available by the dozen, as are whole pies. PCS also offers to-go quarts of beans, rice, chile, carne asada, the ever-popular queso and other Santa Fe essentials.

Flexibility and versatility were the names of the game for Back Road Pizza, which rapidly adapted to offer one of the safest, smoothest takeout options in town. The fully contact-free system involved customers placing orders online, texting upon arrival at the restaurant and picking up pizza (plus starters, salads, soups or handy kits for DIY pizza at home) from a covered outdoor area, all without interacting face-to-face with another human, thus reducing risk for staff and patrons alike.

Back Road blazed another new trail by offering grocery items. Picking up a pizza? Take home some eggs, beans, plastic gloves and dish soap while you’re at it. “We started having customers asking us for flour and yeast when the home baking boom started,” owner Piper Kapin says, “and since we always have that in stock and were not experiencing shortages like the grocery supply chains, we jumped at the opportunity. It was a huge success. We still have many of the items available . . . and hope to continue this as we move forward.”

Back Road will reopen and expand outdoor seating once the entire staff is vaccinated.