If food is the sex of the 90s, dining trends indicate it will be limited to foreplay and afterglow. People are skipping entrees (a London restaurant offers “no intercourses,” just appetizers and desserts) and tapas are the new cheap thrill. At Santa Fe Tapas, just down the block from tapas pioneer Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!, that thrill is intensified by the laying on of chili peppers, the fruit that’s into domination. It produces pleasure by sending pain messages to the nervous system, which then manufactures endorphins to counteract them. Hey, chiliheads, it’s called sadomasochism. Look it up.
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Larry Peters and Daniel Castro opened Santa Fe Tapas in mid-January where the Chameleon restaurant used to be. Peters had owned Chameleon along with John Terczak, and Castro was chef. For this new venture, Peters and Castro decided to combine the French techniques Castro had honed as chef at Gordon during the early 1980s with elements of New Southwestern cooking. Known for its innovative cuisine, Santa Fe, New Mexico, has become a culinary name to be reckoned with. The most famous of its chefs is Mark Miller, proprietor of the Coyote Cafe, who has been a prime mover in making the chili pepper fashionable. A former anthropologist who believes that the New Mexican food tradition is pre-Columbian in origin, he uses truly traditional ingredients to re-create the kinds of dishes he imagines cliff-dwelling Native Americans ate centuries ago: venison with ancho chili and prickly-pear sauce, wild mushroom tamales, and goat leg baked in sage.
We mostly went for the hot stuff. Our favorites were: four grilled shrimp ($5.95) with a delicious accompaniment of pecan pancake, cucumber salsa, and roasted red pepper sauce–order two; succulent baked oysters ($4.95) on the half shell with cilantro pesto; and a great torta de pollo ($5.95), minced chicken layered with whole-wheat tortillas, salsa, nino peppers, and Chihuahua cheese and served with roasted tomatillo, which, although it is of the same nightshade family as the tomato, has a fruitier taste. Duck enchiladas ($4.50) with caramelized onions and guajillo (a very hot pepper) had a strange-tasting cheddar cheese sauce; and what was billed as crispy duck ($8.75) turned out to be fatty, although the accompanying chipotle chilis, spicy fruit relish, and black beans were delicious. The duck enchilada and the grilled shrimp come with a dollop of sour cream, the core reason I eat Mexican food. Save the raisin tamale ($2.50) with guajillo sauce for Madonna. She’ll try anything.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Nathan Mandell.
