Chris Bethoney leads Campo’s farm-to-table kitchen. Photograph courtesy of Los Poblanos/Douglas Merriam.
I’M SITTING IN A LONG BOOTH inside Campo, the renowned restaurant at Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm, chatting with head chef Chris Bethoney. He wants to show off two things: the nosh board and the crispy pork memela.
I live in the neighborhood and come to Campo several times a year for brunch with girlfriends, birthday dinners with the family, and holiday parties. But a recent visit with the chef made me understand this farm-to-table restaurant in a new way.
Los Poblanos sits on 25 acres tucked into a bend of the Río Grande, its low-slung buildings set back from the road and separated by lavender fields, garden rows, and pens of clucking chickens and Navajo-Churro sheep. The effect is shockingly serene, pastoral, and private, especially considering it’s nearly in the middle of Albuquerque. But that contrast typifies this relaxed Michelin two-key stay. The dining room is sometimes dotted with famous faces, who are in town filming TV shows and movies, but for foodies, the biggest stars are on the plate.
Pickled green chiles put a New Mexico twist on the ceviche.
Photograph courtesy of Los Poblanos/Douglas Merriam.
Take the nosh board. It’s a painterly tableau of sliced bread, crackers, cheese, charcuterie, pickles, and jam, all made on the property (except for the artisanal cheeses, which come from small purveyors). Don’t be surprised if your waiter can’t rattle off the full board list by heart. Even Bethoney found the day’s selections a pleasant surprise. That’s because this kitchen produces so much that’s not spelled out on the menu.
Campo’s kitchen staff pickled the nosh board’s mushrooms and turnips, prepared the beer mustard, and made the meats—from the summer sausage to the pork rillette. Its bakery produced the baguette, lavash, and pepita shortbread. An astonishing amount of thought, labor, and creativity goes into this appetizer.
It gets better. “I made this board, actually,” Bethoney says. He means the actual piece of cut and polished wood all these treats rest on. It makes me laugh out loud, because it’s almost too much!
“The menu is built on what the farmers are producing. ... We want to tell a story across the menu.”
—Chris Bethoney, Campo head chef
Los Poblanos is passionately devoted to serving food grown and raised locally. In a dry state that’s flush with snowcapped mountains and sun-streaked deserts, that’s a challenge, but one Bethoney takes with pleasure and pride.
He’s been known to commit to a farmer’s entire crop—a vital support for small growers, but also a choice that might force extra creativity in the kitchen. For example, a recent purchase from a blackberry grower resulted in thousands of pounds of fruit. The Campo crew got to work, freezing some of the berries, poaching others for desserts, making jam, then pickling and fermenting the rest.
On any given day, the menu at Campo might include blackberry demi-glace drizzled over a rib eye steak, pickled pomegranate seeds dotted atop a chicken salad, house-made kimchi nestled under a sweet potato pierogi, or apple barbecue sauce slathered over a slab of beef brisket. Each dish can represent several farmers, multiple harvests, and an unimaginable number of hours in the kitchen.
Los Poblanos grows many of its own greens.
Photograph courtesy of Los Poblanos/Josh Hailey Studio.
Just that taste makes you grateful that lodging guests get special privileges at Los Poblanos, where even the new field suites include some of the same Territorial Revival furniture as the 1930s John Gaw Meem–designed rooms. Guests receive guaranteed dinner reservations, which are normally booked a month out, and exclusive access to the wood-paneled Library Bar, perfect for a pre-prandial cocktail and quick canoodle by the fire.
But the best perk is access to the chef’s table dinners. With only four seats in the center of the kitchen action, this might be the most exclusive and interesting culinary experience in Albuquerque. The 10-course chef’s table menu isn’t published, because Bethoney loves a surprise. “The menu is built on what the farmers are producing,” he says, so it’s constantly changing. A recent menu included huitlacoche (corn smut) cappelletti with local goat cheese and mushrooms, onions, apple brandy, foraged piñon, and cured egg yolk from the farm’s hens.
“We want to tell a story across the menu,” Bethoney says. It’s a narrative about what’s ripe on the farm right now, but also about carrying on the valley’s agricultural history, respecting its Puebloan and Spanish heritages, and celebrating its present-day culinary artists. Even if you don’t splurge on the chef’s table, any meal at Campo puts the mwah!—chef’s kiss—on a stay at Los Poblanos.
John Gaw Meem designed the La Quinta building.
Photograph courtesy of Los Poblanos/Caitlyn Ottinger.
DON’T MISS
If you’re not staying at Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm, you can still get a special taste of the property with Sunday afternoon tea at the historic John Gaw Meem–designed La Quinta building. The sweet-and-savory menu includes traditional scones and tea sandwiches, but with splashes of local flavor like blue-corn-lavender shortbread. Stick around for a docent-led tour of La Quinta.
