SantaFe.com

Lunch with Danny and Maria Rhodes is a simple but tasty affair: miso soup and heaps of intensely flavored oyster mushrooms on toasted Sage Bakehouse whole-wheat bread. We’re sitting at the dining table of their rented 19th century adobe house north of Española. Outside, past a stand of trees, the flat plain that Maria farms as Lady Bug Fields stretches east towards the Rio Grande. In the other direction, out of sight, are the shed and greenhouse that house Desert Fungi, Danny’s mushroom growing business. This is their seventh season at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market, and fifth for their...

Monday, June 9, 2008
by Barry Fields and Jennifer Spelman (Photographer) • localflavor magazine

If you can’t tell a book by its cover, you can’t tell a restaurant by its name. Sleeping Dog Tavern conjures up images of a sports bar with lots of beer and standard pub fare, which pretty much describes its former incarnation. At first glance, when you descend below street level into a subterranean lounge with two televisions (down from the previous seven), it’s what you still expect. Bogey wouldn’t be out of place at the large bar in a dimly lit room with plum colored ceilings, an unobtrusive carpet, dark tables and black chairs. The “outdoor” tables in the airy San Francisco Street...

Saturday, March 1, 2008
by Barry Fields and Michelle Vest (Photographer) • localflavor magazine

New Mexican bred Gordon Tooley emanates contentment. Unlike most of the world, he doesn’t crave more. In his early twenties, while working on a 700-acre farm in Maine, where he had followed his sweetheart Margaret, he witnessed a tree grafting demonstration. “I was like, ‘That’s me!’ I wanted to have a tree farm, and to grow things that are not common.”

Not a typical life goal. “I flunked out of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. I wasn’t a theoretical kind of person.” A hands-on person, he obtained an AA degree from Colorado Mountain College in Outdoor Studies, worked at Mesa...

Tuesday, May 1, 2007
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW about Tom Joyce before meeting him. He’s a blacksmith-turned-artist who has achieved a level of recognition most artists dream of but never reach. His work has been purchased at high prices by prestigious museums and for public display, as well as by collectors. In 2003 he was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the so-called “genius award” of $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached. This year he received the Rotary Foundation for the Arts Distinguished Artist of the Year award. Santa Fe’s upcoming ArtFeast includes a banquet...

Thursday, February 1, 2007
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine

This year I’m skiing on Thanksgiving. After disappointing snow last winter, The Farmer’s Almanac predicts above average snowfall for New Mexico this season. But I also want to celebrate Thanksgiving, the traditional opening day of ski season. My girlfriend Tera, who lives in New York, will be here, so I decided to invite some friends, all skiers, to come to my place after a day on the slopes. Since I know so many wonderful chefs and cooks in Santa Fe, I asked some of them for recipes, which I’m rounding out with a few other dishes.

Soup makes a great beginning to a meal after a day...

Wednesday, November 1, 2006
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine

Dear Barry,

Another story for you...Rooftop Pizzeria. Latest enterprise of the tireless Gerald Peters and Santa Fe Dining. Jeff Jinnett is the creative and strategic brains of the Santa Fe Dining enterprise...Tyler Carr is the General Manager of this restaurant, Russell Thornton is the Executive Chef (and pretty much developed the menu along with consulting chef Tom Kerpon), Nick Zocco is the chef de cuisine...I like their approach that “this is what Santa Fe needed” because I think they’re right on target. I really loved this place–I think the pizza is in a class by...

Thursday, June 1, 2006
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine

Rick Kingsbury’s old ‘93 Ford pickup bounces along the primitive road that parallels the Pecos River. Shovels, rakes, and picks rattle in the back of the truck. His two Jack Russell Terriers, who go everywhere with him, keep us company in the front. He shows me a small dam on the river. Just upstream from the simple concrete barrier and the artificial waterfalls it creates, water is diverted into an irrigation ditch that winds its way for miles along the river, giving life to his ranch. Downstream, he stops in front of a sixty acre pasture, where the herd of cattle that belong to him and...

Monday, May 1, 2006
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine

Walking through the front door of La Casa Sena, I immediately note two new aspects of the restaurant. First, the lobby feels like an entrance, which it never did before. In place of the small, cramped bar, I’m in a spacious room. Second, purple carpet lends a warm, lush color to the space. A fire crackles in the central fireplace, a large chandelier suspended in front of it.

As my brother Arthur and I follow the host to our table, I take in the new art work, contemporary brown leather dining chairs, and bright white walls. The look is clean and modern, yet still speaks of Santa Fe. We...

Wednesday, March 1, 2006
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine

Like many New Mexicans, I have a love of Spanish, Mexican, and Southwest antiques.

A couple of pieces of early and mid-nineteenth century Spanish furniture, purchased from Ron Messick’s Canyon Road gallery before his death, grace my home, as do an old Mexican chest I found in a dusty Mexican village near Zacatecas and a couple of small tables I bought at the Mexican Connection in Santa Fe. Yet I’ve been ignorant about the Spanish New World colonial heritage which forms so much of the design aesthetic of New Mexico and the Southwest. Although none of my pieces are Spanish colonial, that era...

Wednesday, March 1, 2006
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine

Carolyn Sigstedt and Cindy Barreraz, missionaries of heritage preservation and community promotion, deserve our attention. In October, after months of work on a historical building on East DeVargas Street, they opened The Mission Café and Sweet Shop with a shared vision in mind.

Carolyn’s initial commitment was not so much to a restaurant, the name of which reflects the church up the street on Old Santa Fe Trail, but to the building itself. It became the residence for her and her children when she bought it fifteen years ago, and she ran a business making art prints out of the oldest part...

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine