AS OUR GROUP SETTLES into the theater-style classroom at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, chef Michelle “Mica” Chavez serves up a taste of what’s to come on our Restaurant Walking Tour. The Southwest gazpacho spiced with New Mexico’s famous green chile grounds our palates and feeds Chavez’s culinary story. “Santa Fe is special,” she says, “with layer upon layer of people who left their footprint. We’ll be walking in the steps of moccasins, bootheels, wagon wheels, and so many others who came through this way.”
The first stop on our journey, however, is a simple stroll across the street to Pranzo Italian Grill. Our group of 16 finds room along the long, L-shaped bar and digs into chef and owner Steven Lemon’s creamy carbonara with cured pork and Calabrian chili.
“This is the original sushi bar of Shohko Café,” Lemon explains, “the first sushi restaurant in New Mexico.” The Fukuda family ran their beloved Japanese restaurant from 1977 until they retired in 2019. When Pranzo relocated after three decades in the Santa Fe Railyard, the Johnson Street space was a perfect fit. The old adobe building needed renovating before Pranzo reopened in 2021, but out of respect, Lemon kept Shohko’s original sushi bar. “We honor the food and traditions of Italian cooking,” he tells us. But it’s also clear that Santa Fe’s culinary traditions have special meaning to him as well.
The Santa Fe School of Cooking's three-hour Restaurant Walking Tour includes visits to four distinct restaurants for private tastings and chef interactions.
This rich layering of history and cuisine is a key ingredient in the cooking school’s three-hour walking tours, which visit four different restaurants for private tastings and visits with the chefs.
Chavez is easy to follow in her black chef’s jacket and colorful bandanna. On our way to the second stop, she points out brick-lined Burro Alley, a European-style passageway that housed a rowdy 19th-century gambling saloon and brothel owned by the notorious Doña Tules. She played a mean game of monte and served her customers regional fare like picadillo and carne adovada.
We reach Horno Restaurant, an elevated gastropub owned by James Beard Award–nominated chef David Sellers and his wife, Heather. As we savor house-made fettuccine with pork belly, Heather points out a miniature horno in the entryway. The Spanish introduced the outdoor, hive-shaped mud oven to Pueblo peoples in the 16th century. Today, the ovens continue to bring people together to bake bread and other food. It’s an apt name for this restaurant, where locals and travelers break bread—Horno focaccia, in this case—and enjoy Asian dumplings, bouillabaisse, and other globally inspired cuisine.
Art fills Sazón’s dining room.
“We decided that Horno would be about super excellent food with quality ingredients and no fine dining,” Heather says. “We wanted to make Horno affordable.”
Following in the footsteps of traders and merchants, we cross the Santa Fe Plaza and pause at La Fonda on the Plaza, with its multilevel Spanish Colonial Revival–style architecture. Undercover U.S. agents were posted at the hotel, Chavez says, looking for spies seeking intel about the top-secret Manhattan Project from its scientists who socialized here.
“La Fonda was a renowned Harvey House then,” Chavez adds. I bet the scientists, agents, and spies relished the hotel’s beef empanadas and chile-roasted chicken, examples of the fine dining and fresh ingredients that were hallmarks of Fred Harvey’s hospitality empire.
As we trod uphill on Old Santa Fe Trail, we’re walking in the wagon wheel tracks that Chavez mentioned, left by travelers reaching the old trade route’s end at the Plaza. Inside the bistro-style 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar, a 30-year destination for classic and contemporary French cuisine, we learn that Italian immigrants built this small centuries-old adobe home. The influence of European settlers on Santa Fe becomes tangible as we enjoy chef and owner Louis Moskow’s French country pâté with grilled bread and mustard.
DID YOU KNOW?
Apricots, like the ones in Fernando Olea’s New Mexico mole, were among the prized fruits grown in the late 1860s by Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy in his lush six-acre garden behind the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. He also had peach, pear, apple, and cherry trees, as well as a half-acre spring-fed pond. The fruits of his garden and the fish he stocked in his pond helped to feed those in need.
Our tour ends a few blocks away at the venerated Sazón, where the unique blend of traditional and contemporary Mexican cuisine earned co-owner and chef Fernando Olea the James Beard Award for Best Chef of the Southwest in 2022. The Mexico City native is a master of mole and mezcal. Both are on today’s menu. “Mole is a dish, not a condiment,” Olea says, as we sample five versions. His New Mexico mole, an intoxicating blend of apricots, red chile, and other regional ingredients, pairs nicely with a smoky mezcal, which can be an aperitif, a meal companion, and a digestive, he says. (In other words, anytime.)
We leave the tour sated, stuffed with fabulous food and the many stories we’ve heard along the way. Our guide is equally content. “Being able to interact with people from all over the world and to show them a street-level view of my favorite city is what I most love about leading these tours,” she says.
For me, an afternoon spent walking through ancient streets and tasting foods inspired by global and regional cuisines has fed me a new appreciation for Santa Fe, the many cultures that have called it home, and the chefs of today who pay homage to them all in new and inspiring ways.
Read more: Dig into these flavorful excursions.
SANTA FE SCHOOL OF COOKING
Launched 20 years ago, the Restaurant Walking Tours are held on Fridays from 2 to 5 p.m., February through December. $140.
