Food xxxx
Service xxx
Atmosphere xxxx
Value xxxOnce upon a time long, long ago, Canyon Road storeowners, my wife and I among them, lived behind their art galleries, jewelry shops and one-of-a-kind boutiques. Santa Fe, not yet a year-round resort, was very, very quiet in winter. Darkness fell early, and we’d all lock up, those of us who’d bothered to open at all, and meet at El Farol for drinks.
Recently, while sitting in El Farol watching a late-March snowstorm pummel an empty Canyon Road, the funky, convivial spirit of 25 years ago, still alive and well, delivered a roundhouse punch to my heart. When David Salazar bought the place in the mid-’80s, he wisely kept the old bar, with its Alfred Morang murals of old Canyon Road, just the way it was. Even more wisely, he transformed the kitchen and introduced tapas to Santa Fe.
The current menu offers a couple dozen hot tapas and an additional dozen cold ones, ranging in price from $4.50 to just under $10. Dinner entrées cost from $22.50 for a zarzuela (which can be a Spanish operetta but is also a fish soup) to $29 for a rib-eye steak. My partner had three tapas, enough for a light eater; I probably would have ordered four but chose instead a tapa of chorizo and blood sausage with a garlicky mayonnaise ($6.95) followed by the zarzuela.
An abundance of mussels, shrimp and scallops in a spicy broth filled with crunchy chunks of almond, the zarzuela was so rich I nearly had to pass up dessert. Almonds ground rather than chopped are more common in this dish, but I found the chopped variant imaginative, adding
an intriguing texture to the saffron broth.
My partner began with a few paper-thin slices of Serrano ham ($5.95). (Imported from Spain, Serrano is air-cured, like prosciutto.) It came garnished with caper berries, cornichon and whole-grain mustard. She followed this with
gambas al ajillo ($7.95), large, garlicky shrimp with tails on, served in a spicy sauce — messy but fun — and then bocadillo, a pork-loin sandwich on grilled bread ($4.50), which was small for a sandwich perhaps, but large for a tapa.
Spanish wines from a number of regions are available by the bottle. The list is exceptionally deep, with more than a dozen Riojas and an equal number of sherries. A generously sized glass of Montecillo ($7), the house white, was crisp and so good that I told myself to search it out at retail. The Rioja red ($7.50) was full-bodied. Glasses are not listed on the menu, but our server seemed to have a number of choices at his fingertips.
We ordered a vanilla ice cream smothered in sweet Pedro Ximenez Sherry ($8). The chef
recommends a 1972 Pedro Ximenez Gran Riserva to accompany this dessert. Recommended drinks are listed for each dessert, though prices are not listed. When I asked our server, she thought it was around $6 but went to check: $12. I’m not suggesting the wine is not worth the double
digits, but depending on the state of your pocketbook, you may want to inquire first.
The bar was noisy, as a bar should be, and the tables set far apart in all the rooms, as they should be, so you needn’t out-shout your neighbors. Our dinner in the small room adjoining the bar was quiet enough, but the music, which begins nightly between 8 and
9 p.m., hadn’t yet started. I returned a few nights later to check out the food and service after entertainment began. The music, though loud, didn’t block conversation in the rooms in back, and the service remained very good. My entrée that night, pollo al ajillo ($24), chicken with wonderful tiny roasted garlic cloves and a pair of roast halves of baby artichoke, was not as hot as it might have been, perhaps as much due to a kitchen getting ready to close as to the music and general merrymaking in the front room.
If I were going for an evening of fun and music, I would probably have the bocadillo and some additional tapas — perhaps olives and cheese.
If I were going again for dinner, I’d start with one of the tapas as an appetizer and look forward to trying another entrée, though it’s hard to imagine skipping that zarzuela.
Dinner for two with four tapas, one entrée, one dessert and two glasses of wine, came to $75.58 before tip.
ttt
808 Canyon Road, 983-9912
Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. daily
Dinner 5:30-10 p.m. daily
Full bar
Dinner reservations suggested
Handicapped-accessible
AMEX • MC • V
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