SantaFe.com

Communities put on events for many reasons. To increase tourism. To build a sense of neighborliness. To celebrate a significant event in their history. To plain old celebrate. Taos in July has rapidly become the time for a festival that combines food, wine, art and culture for a good cause: the Toast of Taos, a fundraiser for the area’s only hospital, Holy Cross.

The media (including this publication) has started to take note, too. “There’s a lot more interest in the event,” says Holy Cross Hospital Foundation Director Sally Trigg, organizer of the weeklong shindig. “We’ve gotten...

Sunday, June 1, 2008
by Kelly Koepke and Nikesha Breeze (Photographer) • localflavor magazine

Mauka’s Joel Coleman is making food so original and appealing that other Santa Fe chefs are well advised to take note. In a city where most new restaurants focus either on Southwest, American comfort, classic Continental or some combination thereof, Coleman derives his pan-Asian fusion dishes from the flavors of his Hawaiian childhood.

There are Asian restaurants, to be sure, but nothing with the scope of Coleman’s elegant vision. To sample his inventive dishes, I head to Mauka (“towards the mountains” in Hawaiian) with Ja Soon Kim, a local yoga teacher. Korean by birth, she lived for...

Sunday, June 1, 2008
by Barry Fields and Nikesha Breeze (Photographer) • localflavor magazine

Linda Prager, owner of Kioti, an upscale women’s clothing and accessories store in Sanbusco Center, apologizes if she has to end our interview early. “I have a new puppy, a German Shepherd. This is our third shepherd, and we can tell he will be the last puppy,” she says.

Our interview starts out chatting amiably about dogs, children and the joys of small business ownership. Prager and her husband David Muller started the business that would eventually become Kioti in Michigan in 1984. Fueled by a passion for the folk art and antiques of Indonesia, as well as a desire for travel and the hunt...

Sunday, June 1, 2008
by Kelly Koepke and Nikesha Breeze (Photographer) • localflavor magazine

C’mon, you know what goes on behind the scenes: hidden at every retail counter there is a big money shredder, and as soon as you spend a dollar on something–say groceries, a CD, some clothes–the dollar is destroyed forever. No, of course that’s untrue, but isn’t it how we often think about money? After you spend it, it’s gone, so you better be economical and get things as cheaply as you can.

In reality there is no shredder, and if you spend that dollar to buy something from your neighbor, your neighbor will probably end up spending that same dollar to buy something from you, or to employ...

Monday, June 9, 2008
by Katie Mehrer and Nikesha Breeze (Photographer) • localflavor magazine

Getting a recipe out of David Fresquez is not an easy feat. It’s not that he’s withholding–far from it. He is clearly an accomplished cook and utterly generous with his knowledge. It’s just that he’s talking a mile a minute, and he keeps adding in ingredients he forgot to mention earlier. “You have to wash the tripe in several changes of water. You boil it in salt water, actually. This dish takes twenty-four hours to make. I add green chile stew and red chile stew, but you have to cook it overnight in chicken broth first. Then you add the flavorings. You cook it until it’s very tender. And...

Monday, June 9, 2008
by Jennifer George and Nikesha Breeze (Photographer) • localflavor magazine