Long Roads, Precious Beaches, High Mountain Air

There we go from the purest mountain air of the Jovel Valley at 7,000 feet in the tropics to Lake Chapala at 5,000 feet to Mazatlan and Guaymas at sea level staying in fine old hotels to Tucson in exquisite desert surroundings to Santa Fe at 7,000 feet and staying in the plaza and we are feeling relaxed. Thank you Jesus. or Tlaloc or whatever you call yourself these days.

Have a few green chiles for me.

uj

How is Santa Fe Dawg. I haven't been there is over 15 years. Great food if you like Tex Mex although it was getting pretty fancy last time I was there. One of my favorite cities and I'm very jealous right now!

simpsca wrote:How is Santa Fe Dawg. I haven't been there is over 15 years. Great food if you like Tex Mex although it was getting pretty fancy last time I was there. One of my favorite cities and I'm very jealous right now!

We will be going there shortly, simpsca and look forward to some of the Santa Fe food you and Uncle Jack recommend. We haven´t been there since the 1980s but hope our fond memories have some basis in fact. Hell, we haven´t even been back to the states in ten years except to sell a car in San Antonio so we just think of the U.S. as one vast "Riverwalk" with lots of fatsos (like me) and BBQ joints.

Santa Fe has the distinction of being both one of the most attractive and one of the least attractive cities we have ever visited. When there is money the town is splendid in neighborhhods graced with bucks and taste and historically charming but in unmemorable middle class and lower middle class neighborhoods the town is chain-link-fence stark adobe treeless mud construct WalMart strip center butt ugly.

Damn good food though and, if one has the financial resources to live in those fine centrally located, more or less, historic neigborhoods with the other swells, that´s the town to live in except for the awful climate.

We´ll be attending that international folk art fair the new-rich Texans frequent but that´s OK since we will be there with accomplished artisans from Chiapas who can sell their fantastic works to those Texans and others and spread their fame which they richly deserve.

"Great food if you like Tex Mex ........"

Tex Mex is for the Tejanos and tends to only be popular near the Texas border or resort areas popular with Tejanos. To categorize the typical menu in Santa Fe as Tex Mex would be deemed sacrilegious by New Mexico locals and restaurant owners might have you thrown in jail for heresy! It would be New Mexican food!

Oh! I didn't know there was a new name for it. I most often visit my brother in Houston where it's still called Tex Mex. It's been a long time since I was in Santa Fe but the food was incredible. I'm not surprised they have re-named it. If I had the money I'd go there just to eat.

They didn’t have to re-name it. The cuisine of NM starts to take shape around 1600 in and around Santa fe. The Tejanos didn't stumble upon Chili con carne until about 1842 in San Antonio.....almost a 250 year head start.

NM is the home of some of the best chilies on the NA continent, both red and green and simpsca is right; the food is incredible. Sopapias (Indian Fry Bread) and honey for breakfast, or pork/goat and green chilies with blue corn tortillas for lunch is close to a spiritual experience.

uj

Uncle Jack wrote:They didn’t have to re-name it. The cuisine of NM starts to take shape around 1600 in and around Santa fe. The Tejanos didn't stumble upon Chili con carne until about 1842 in San Antonio.....almost a 250 year head start.

NM is the home of some of the best chilies on the NA continent, both red and green and simpsca is right; the food is incredible. Sopapias (Indian Fry Bread) and honey for breakfast, or pork/goat and green chilies with blue corn tortillas for lunch is close to a spiritual experience.

uj

Damn, Jack, now you have me fired up for this, especially for the indian fry bread with honey and chliles to die for. If you think Dawg is fat now, when I return I may be in the cargo hold of a Greyhound.

Dawg, Just think of it as a spiritual experience like UJ said - putting you one step closer to Nirvana.

New Mexican "cuisine" runs neck and neck with Tex-Mex for the most over-rated ethnic food. Smother something, doesn't matter what, with green chile and you have NM cuisine. The only difference with Tex-Mex is the color of the crappy gravy they call salsa.

AGREED!

And with very few exceptions, one cannot even find a decent margarita either!

simpsca wrote:How is Santa Fe Dawg. I haven't been there is over 15 years. Great food if you like Tex Mex.

I have always taken exception to the labeling of many restaurants in New Mexico and other southwestern states. Way too often the label "Mexican" is applied, which is a misnomer.
The food is wonderful, but it is not Mexican. Nor is it Tex Mex...which originated on that border. It too suffers from being mislabeled as "Mexican" food.
The much more accurate term is "Southwestern Cuisine", one of the signature dishes being green chili,(or chile), which smothers just about anything you can think of...yum.
By the way, red chili is a "Texican" dish, invented back in the days before Texas joined the Union. Traditionally it is never cooked with beans, though it may be served with them.
Another great tradition in both Tex Mex and Southwestern cooking is cheese melted over the top of a dish. In my experience that just doesn't happen in Mexican Cuisine, where cheese is used as a garnish and dishes don't hang out under a heat lamp. Lizzy

Yes Lizzy, I was corrected. I should know better since I've visited the Southwest (outside Texas) a lot. And now that I think about it Southwestern is the last term I heard of for New Mexican cuisine. Just can't keep my cuisines straight.

Solovino wrote:New Mexican "cuisine" runs neck and neck with Tex-Mex for the most over-rated ethnic food. Smother something, doesn't matter what, with green chile and you have NM cuisine. The only difference with Tex-Mex is the color of the crappy gravy they call salsa.

Well, Solovino, everyone who has been anywhere knows that the best Mexican food is found in California, not Mexico, just as some of the best East Indian food from various parts of that country (with certain exceptions)from what used to be called Madras to Shrinagar is found in London and some of the best Algerian or Tunisian food is found in Paris. The best Tunisian food I ever tasted was cooked up by an old Orthodox Jewish Tunisian boyfriend of my wife in Paris and that plus an Orthodox Jewish Tunisian Arabic restaurant dinner served in Paris'´Belleville District under strict rabbinical standards to the point that the Tunisian Rose Wine could not be served by the same guy who served the couscous with organ meats, was a damn fine meal. Although I was a newly wed young man, I fell so in love with that food I offered to leave my bride if he would just cook for me and take me out for orthodox Jewish/Arabic food in Belleville. He declined, and in retrospect, I am grateful for that but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

New Mexican food is not Mexican food nor is it Tex Mex food and for that I am thankful. However, I must admit that we did not retire to New Mexico and one of the best meals we ever had was cooked up on the BBQ by a Coleto family in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and consisted of Mexican-style chorizo and longaniza sausages, tasajo crudo and various condiments plus copious amounts of XX Lager. Outstanding.

Just kidding you about Mexican food Solovino so calm down.

Dawg didn´t get this fat by just eating "sliders" from Krystal although that helped.

hound dog wrote:
Well, Solovino, everyone who has been anywhere knows that the best Mexican food is found in California, not Mexico,....

Although it is far from the first time you have made it, that has to be one of the stupidest comments you have ever made on these boards. I recall your now estranged soul sister, gringal, making the same comment on several occasions also.

Consider the source(s) I say.

After all, in spite of the pretentious boasting the two of you have constantly subjected the forum to over the years about all of the wonderful and incomparable meals partook in the Bay Area, she has extolled the virtues of a ghastly restaurant on the beach in Manzanillo and your sorry ass can't walk by a BK without walking in. Now you make it even worse by mentioning sliders.

What are sliders?

Sliders are small bite sized hamburgers served like appetizers.....

Oh, we have something like it in the US at White Castle. You buy a sack full because they are only bite size. In the US White Castle is the only place I know that carries them. Don't even know if they are still in business.

Apparently, you have been out of the US for some time as it is now the "in thing" to offer "sliders"in many different forms! As with White Castle, it doesn't make them any better but just a so-called new twist.

simpsca wrote:Oh, we have something like it in the US at White Castle. You buy a sack full because they are only bite size. In the US White Castle is the only place I know that carries them. Don't even know if they are still in business.

Back in the 60s when I was a youngster living in Mobile,Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, sliders, which were small hamburgers or, in Dawg´s case, cheesburgers fried on a large fry grill and noted for the fact that they contained lots of finely chopped onions which I have always assumed were freeze died and reconstituted based on their taste and texture. In the Deep South, these small and delicious munchkins were sold at the Krystal chain which typically had small burger joints in those days selling just sliders and like products. These hamburger joints were ususally. in those days, found in somewhat seedy sections of southern urban downtowns and were staffed with middle aged women dressed in standard apron garb and, no doubt, earning minimum wages. These women were part of the charm of these seedy diners. I have no doubt that the White Castle burger joints were similar to those Krystal joints but located in tha Midwest rather than the Deep South. I have never been in a White Castle but in the 90s while living in Northern California, i used to buy frozen White Castle cheeseburgers and microwave them and they were the same product as Krystal sliders but here is what yu need to know. You have to eat sliders quickly upon their having been fried or it is like eating cold lard balls and those middle aged ladies were essential to the slider experience.

After watching Joe Namath whip the ass of other football teams at Birmingham´s Legion Fielkd back in the early 1960s, we used to get drunk and order out something like 50 sliders to engorge upon in our hotel rooms while overindulging in Green Jack and Coke. Those were the days my friend.

Back to better cuisine...
When you get to Santa Fe, I hope you check out The Pink Adobe. I have a coveted recipe book that is well used called "In the Pink"...it was a special edition for the 50th anniversary of the Pink Adobe in 1994.
The recipes are wonderful and are classified as "Southwestern Menus". If you get there, I sincerely hope the experience is as divine as the cookbook.

ferret wrote:Back to better cuisine...
When you get to Santa Fe, I hope you check out The Pink Adobe. I have a coveted recipe book that is well used called "In the Pink"...it was a special edition for the 50th anniversary of the Pink Adobe in 1994.
The recipes are wonderful and are classified as "Southwestern Menus". If you get there, I sincerely hope the experience is as divine as the cookbook.

Thanks, Ferret:

The Pink Adobe has just been added to my list of places to try. I´ll report my experience when we return to Mexico.

Ferret:

Like most anything in today's world, the Pink Adobe has undergone a number of changes:
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/The-Pink-Adobe-Former-owners-want-dine-in-back

What a shame! I always dreamed I'd get there one day. Thanks for the update...better take that one off your list Dawg.