Joey the English bulldog is watching and waiting. He’s supposed to stay in the third floor office above the Coyote Café, so most of the time he’s shooed out if he tries to get on the “backstage” elevator, but he has also learned that there are two bussers whom he can intimidate into letting him ride. Ah! And there one is now.
A quick waddle, and he’s on the lift. When it stops at the second floor, he can unobtrusively sidle into the café …
“Joey!”
Drat. His Master’s Voice. Chef/owner Eric DiStefano has caught him again.
“You just get right back on that elevator, mister, and go on back up.”
Don’t feel too sorry for poor Joey. This bulldog dines on steak bones and other goodies all night long, with people running in and out of the office and storage rooms he “guards.” He just wanted to join the party in the café.
Fortunately for the “Gang of Four” — the young restaurateurs who bought the famed Coyote Café from restaurateur Mark Miller in late December — a lot of humans have felt the same way.
About five months into their ownership, DiStefano, Sara Chapman, Tori Mendes and Quinn Stephenson are pinching themselves that the 20-year-old restaurant has moved into its new era with scarcely a hiccup. It has remained profitable, and the quartet of owners is heady with delight over being their own bosses, finally.
First ownership
DiStefano, 39, who earned worldwide plaudits when associated with the haute Canyon Road restaurant Geronimo and the Palace Avenue bistro Lucky’s, was never really an owner before, he said.
“I was a faux-owner. I’ve always tried to be a partner, but I wasn’t. I was never really a chef/owner until now,” he told the Journal.
And what has he learned from being an owner for five months?
“Patience,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve learned a lot about communication. I don’t swear as much, now that I’m out (at an open cooking island) in public. And I’ve learned how nice Santa Fe is. The restaurant, from the night we took over, did a lot better than I expected. The amount of people who followed us (DiStefano brought his executive sous chef, Eduardo Rodriguez, and pastry chef, Eduardo’s wife, Ericka, from his previous kitchen) here from Geronimo has been a wonderful surprise.”
He also listed the pleasures of a chef-designed kitchen, with room for the four or five prep cooks to work without stumbling over one another, as a major plus.
DiStefano’s wife, Chapman, 33, worked at Coyote Café for 16 years, left for a short while and returned as a co-owner. She said all four owners “do everything,” but her stated responsibilities are to run the door and handle marketing and public relations.
“It was scary in the beginning (last fall, previous to the actual turnover), when Quinn and Tori and I were deciding to buy the business,” Chapman said. “When we got Eric to come over, then it was not so scary.”
Mendes, 37, basically manages the Cantina. A fiveyear veteran at Coyote, she said being a co-owner now still means “the same amount of hard work. But it’s more satisfying, knowing that you’re doing it for yourself, and that you’re treating people right.”
Stephenson, 29, also worked at Coyote Café before buying it. The beverage director, he is also a floor manager at night. Growing up working in restaurants and hotels in Santa Fe, Stephenson opined that it was important to Coyote’s continued success to reacquire “hands-on owners who are here every day and night.”
“Nothing surprised me about being an owner,” he said. “I’ve been ready. It’s details, details, details. And an awareness that your actions and decisions are being held to a higher standard — your own standard.”
Same service, different menus
Not many aesthetic changes were made to Coyote Café — a little paint, some new dinnerware. “It took all our money to buy the place, so there wasn’t any capital for sweeping changes,” Stephenson said. “And that may have been a good thing.”
The group has found the resources to open a bistro in the Santa Fe Railyard this fall, however, likely in October or November. Located at REI, it will be named Bin 132, after Coyote’s main address, 132 E. Water St., DiStefano said.
“It is going to be fabulous,” he said. “The design is unique … we have a wine tower in the wine bar.”
Coyote plans to stock about 150 cheeses at Bin 132, serving composed cheese plates and selling cheeses retail. There will also be upscale sandwiches and fresh pasta all day, made by a friend of DiStefano’s who is coming from Italy to be the pastamaker. DiStefano wouldn’t say the man’s name — he doesn’t want anyone else stealing him away from Bin 132/Coyote.
All four new owners acknowledged a sort of “grateful amazement,” as Stephenson put it, that their first quarter at Coyote Café, generally a down time in Santa Fe, was really big.
“The support from the community has been amazing,” Stephenson said. “The local diners and the concierges at the hotels have really kept us going.”
The customers have generally been supportive of the “100 percent changes” DiStefano has made to the menu, the chef said. “I have no limits,” he said. “The menu changes all the time, but although I have great respect for the Southwestern influences, I’m more global.”
He brought some signature dishes, like his famous Telicherry Pepper Elk Tenderloin, from his previous kitchen, but DiStefano has also introduced some notions that he was told wouldn’t fit Geronimo’s more haute ambience, such as a Gruyere Sesame Fondue (with cipollini bacon rumaki and warm fingerling potatoes to dunk, yum) and Prime Pickled Jalapeño Beef Tartare — “more like bistro food,” he said.
“I tackled desserts that first (cold) night, before Ericka even got here, with a hot apple thing and cognac ice cream. That was pretty successful,” he said with a grin.
Not every innovation has been a complete triumph, he admitted. He invented a wondrous scallop dish that was finished tableside — sushi-grade scallops barely grilled with a little hoisin sauce, then hot sesame oil was poured over them. Scrumptious, but the sizzling and, well, a little spattering, tended to unnerve the customers. “That’s being reworked,” DiStefano said ruefully.
For Stephenson, a 2nddegree sommelier, being in charge of the beverages is terrific, he said. The bar of a first-class restaurant has to have a signature cocktail or two, he explained, and the most important thing about a signature cocktail is that it can’t be replicated down the street. “You have to use your own ingredients, ingredients that other bars don’t have,” he elucidated.
Stephenson has created the Apple Thyme Cocktail, for instance, that includes Absolut citron vodka with a thymeinfused syrup he makes himself and pureed, locally grown Granny Smith apples. And the Coyote is gaining a reputation for his Water Street Sunset, a play on the Tequila Sunrise. His version combines Saigon cinnamon-infused syrup with El Tesoro Platinum tequila layered over ice with fresh orange juice and blood orange puree.
The Gang of Four are all so young, they are seldom recognized as owners, with the exception of DiStefano. An impeccably correct, silverhaired Englishman, Kevin Knowles, works the door most nights, “and people go straight to him, assuming he’s the owner,” giggled Chapman. She’s seen that reaction at more than one venue.
Coyote Café also caters, and at one party Chapman was working all stations, including some time spent washing dishes. A man at the party wandered out to the kitchen and admired her energetic washing-up. “You keep working like that,” he told her kindly, “and someday you might own a restaurant, too.”
He came into Coyote Café the next week. “He recognized me and realized I was one of the owners, and he was so embarrassed,” she said with a laugh. “I told him, ‘Hey, think nothing of it. We’re all in this together. We all do whatever needs to be done. And we’re glad you’re here.’ ’’ Coyote Café and Cantin
aWHAT: Global Fusion Cuisine by Eric DiStefano
WHERE: 132 W. Water St., 983-1615
WHEN: Open every day
Coyote Café: 5:30 to 10 p.m.
Rooftop Cantina: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
