One Weekend, Three Meals

At the end of May Jim and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary and we are going to splurge with 3 meals at three Santa Fe restaurants. Not all on one day, that would be too much.

But one day we will go out to breakfast at The Flying Tortilla (very hearty). 

Flying Tortilla for a big breakfast

The next day we'll go to lunch at The Compound (elegant and pricey). 

The Compound for an elegant late lunch

The third evening we'll have a green chile entree at La Choza (local, authentic northern New Mexican.) 

La Choza (sister to The Shed, an acclaimed tourist bistro on the plaza)
La Choza means "the shed, or hut" in Spanish

After that we'll probably be in a food coma for a few days.

In April after Easter weekend, fully vaccinated, we did have a great Mexican cafe meal in California with family when we visited. It was outdoors on a porch, and it was our first real foray eating with other people at a restaurant.

Other than that, over the past 14 months we've had only a couple occasions here in town where we ate on the side porch of one restaurant or set up in the parking lot at another, with plastic utensils and tables separated. 

Now we are ready to try real dining.

During the covid year we have been getting chef prepared meals once a week from a local husband and wife caterer, Carmen and Penny Rodriguez. You can read about Carmen's story here -- he had a rough life as a child laborer in the fields, as a gang member in Chicago and eventually found a productive life through cooking. And he pays it back through running a youth culinary program for at risk kids in Santa Fe.

We order from his menu online and the food is delivered to our front door, frozen. We heat it ourselves and serve it ourselves. It's very good, and sometimes even adventurous, but it's not like eating out. It does support a great culinary enterprise in town, especially through all the shutdowns, though.

So a weekend of three sit down restaurant meals in a row is sounding to us like a crazy wild celebration, suitable for renewing our marriage for another year with promise, gusto, great food, and the fervent hope that the coming year will be more . . . normal?