Someone’s In the Kitchen at the Cowden Café

Museum-goers who wouldn’t mind a little nosh with their exhibits have reason to celebrate the re-opening of the History  Museum’s Cowden Café. Someone’s In the Kitchen, a longtime Santa Fe catering company, has begun serving light breakfasts and lunches in the second-floor space with a fabulous outdoor patio overlooking downtown Santa Fe.

Richard Derwostyp (“Just call me Richard,” he says, for obvious reasons) has owned and operated Someone’s in the Kitchen for 20 years.

“It’s going to be simple salads, sandwiches,” he said of the Cowden Café fare. “Some of them won’t be that simple, and some will have a Southwestern edge.

Typical lunch offerings might include gazpacho, smoked-turkey-and-pepper-jack cheese sandwiches, and salads like a Southwest Caesar; spinach with apples, Maytag blue cheese and pecans; and a chef salad. Service will be casual, with orders taken at the counter. With a minimum of two days’ advance notice, the café can prepare sack lunches for groups of visitors. The number to call for group orders is 505-424-8209.

The café is open from 10 am to 4:30 pm Tuesday through Sunday, with lunches from 11:30 am to 3 pm, and drinks, cookies and pastries until 4:30 pm. Lunches will cost $7-$13, and Richard will also have a variety of non-alcoholic beverages and breakfast pastries. Diners don’t need to pay museum admission, unless they’d also like to wander the exhibits. Besides good food and a great view of downtown Santa Fe from its balcony patio, the café has free wireless.

Set on the museum’s second floor, the cafe closed April 1 when its previous operators, the owners of the Plaza Restaurant, decided to focus on repairing their fire-damaged restaurant. A request for proposals was issued for another operator and resulted in a contract for Someone’s In the Kitchen through October, giving Derwostyp an opportunity to see how well his current operation adjusts to the space.

“Richard was the most responsive in trying to work with us and our needs,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the museum.

The café is named for New Mexico’s Cowden family who, from 1883 to 1915, ran the JAL Ranch (for which the southeastern town of Jal is named). The JAL was the open-range home to 40,000 head of cattle and a part of New Mexico history that included the likes of Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight, skirmishes with Comanches, and tales of gutting out the pioneer life in dugouts and covered wagons. At its peak, the JAL occupied much of what is now Lea County, east and south into Texas.

So come on up to the Cowden and enjoy some tasty food from Someone’s in the Kitchen. (Just for the sake of it, and given the name of the new cafe operator, we just couldn’t resist adding this image from the Photo Archives of former First Lady Susie Miles doing her very best — and very prescient — June Cleaver imitation.)

Susie Miles, wife of John E. Miles, in the kitchen at the Governor’s Mansion. Miles served as New Mexico governor from 1939 to 1943. Photo by T. Harmon Parkhurst. Courtesy Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors, No. 54376.

Still Cooking: New Mexico’s Historic Diners, Chile Joints, and Burger Bars

Wanderlust and the love of a great green chile cheeseburger drive Cheryl Alters Jamison and her husband and cookbook-writing partner, Bill. Literally, drive them. All over the state (and, sometimes, the world).

cherylandbilljamisonOn Feb. 13, Jamison spoke to a packed crowd in the History Museum Auditorium, regaling them with tales of some of New Mexico’s oldest and most beloved family-owned restaurants. Her lecture, “Still Cooking: New Mexico’s Historic Diners, Chile Joints, and Burger Bars,” dovetailed with her work for the state Tourism Department on two fronts: A catalog of the state’s culinary treasures and another of the best green chile cheeseburgers from Lordsburg to Dulce, Portales to Gallup.

We can’t give you a chile joint-by-chile joint account of her lecture (really, you had to be there), but wanted to share a few of her highlights. To borrow Jamison’s words: “Are you ready? We’re going to hit the road.”

It’s All Greek to Us

Trust an ancient culture with a mouth-watering culinary tradition to set up shop in New Mexico. Some of the state’s oldest and most renowned eateries have been brought to us by Greek immigrants. And a few might surprise you.

Those tummy-warming breakfast burritos at Tia Sophia’s in Santa Fe? The full-blown New Mexico chile dream that is Tomasita’s? The luscious steaks at Santa Fe’s Bull Ring and Albuquerque’s Monte Carlo Steakhouse and the Western View Steakhouse and Coffee Shop?

Greek, Greek, Greek.

As she began researching her upcoming book, Tasting New Mexico: 100 Years of New Mexican Cooking (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2012), Jamison said she kept stumbling across names like Mariol and Razatos. “I thought it was interesting,” she said.

After the turn of the last century, the first Greek restaurant appeared in Albuquerque, Mecca. By 1917, the city could count seven Greek cafes, including the Court Cafe and Liberty Cafe.

StoreFrontPlazaCafeIn 1929, Jim and Spiros Ipiotis turned the Eagle Cafe (estd. 1918) on the Santa Fe Plaza into the Plaza Cafe. Dionysis (Danny) Razatos bought it in 1947, but it took until the 1980s for his sons to convince him to add Greek food to the menu. (The restaurant suffered a serious fire recently and is closed for renovations, but the Razatos brothers run the Cowden Cafe sandwich shop in the History Museum, and a relative runs the Plaza Cafe Southside in Santa Fe.)

In the 1930s, Jim Pappas, an immigrant who raised sheep and made cheese and possibly moonshine, opened Pappas Sweet Shop in Raton. Still there, its rooms boast a museum’s worth of collectibles and the intoxicating aroma of fresh-baked bread.

A veritable network of Santa Fe’s favorite dining places actually began in Albuquerque’s Atrisco neighborhood, when a young Greek widow, Sophia Mariol, opened the Central Café to support her four children – each of whom eventually opened restaurants in Santa Fe. They had Mariol’s Cafe on the site that now boasts Cafe Pasqual’s. Son Jim opened Tia Sophia’s. One day, daughter Georgia Mariol stumbled onto a little-visited restaurant called Tomasita’s, then on Hickox. (The site later became Dave’s and, still later, Dave’s Not Here, because, well, Dave left.)

Tomasita’s chile was so good that it reminded Georgia of eating in her neighbors’ kitchens in Atrisco. She bought the café by assuming the debt and, it turns out, by assuming Tomasita Leyba, the cook. She moved it to a bigger location in a then-rundown part of Santa Fe known as the railyard. These days, expect to wait up to an hour for a table, but the crowd will keep you entertained.

A Few Hidden Gems

Sometimes the best food is where you least expect it. A few of Jamison’s discoveries:

Johnnie’s Cash Store in Santa Fe. On Camino Don Miguel off of Canyon Road, Johnnie’s expects you to pay for your sundries by cash or check – and to pick up one of the self-service tamales and enjoy it at a picnic table outside. How good is it? Good enough to win accolades from the Washington Post, which wrote:

Johnnie’s mixes soup, cereal, detergent, pet food — and a few baseball trophies from his sons’ youthful triumphs — in a few aisles of low, unglamorous shelves. The main draw sits near an old-time cash register, in the spot most convenience stores reserve for endlessly spinning wieners. “TAMALES,” the hand-drawn sign on a well-worn aluminum warmer shouts out, tempting customers who have dropped by for water or gum to reconsider their restaurant reservations.

They should. Even in New Mexico, where tamales are ubiquitous — and the bar for them is as high as the elevation above sea level (7,000 feet, for anyone who’s counting) — the husk-wrapped packets of pleasure at Johnnie’s stand out as ideals.

“It’s the last of a dying breed,” Jamison said of Johnnie’s Cash Store. “If you haven’t been there, get there while Johnnie’s is still with us.”

El Paragua in Española. Started in 1958 as little more than a drive-up taco stand, El Paragua now serves fine Mexican food in an impressive and rustic stone building – once the tack rooms of a family home. (Ask to see the photo of a young Dustin Hoffman, fresh off of filming The Graduate, when he ate there.)

Leona’s Restaurante in Chimayo. All Leona Medina-Tiede intended to do was offer food to Easter pilgrims to El Santuario de Chimayo. Thirty-four years later, her restaurant is still on the small side (think outdoor picnic tables and don’t bother with a reservation) but beloved by those who appreciate succulent carne adovada, hand-held burritos, posole, chile stew, frito pies, nachos and biscochitos.

Hit the Road

Besides sharing some of the more delicious portions of New Mexico’s history, Jamison’s lecture had an ulterior motive: To entice the audience (and, by extention, you, dear reader) to begin your own culinary wanderings. The Tourism Department’s web sites, linked above, are a great place to start.

Take the scenic drive to the historic Dust Bowl community of Pie Town and sample the Kathy Knapp’s pecan-oat pie at the Pie-O-Neer Cafe. (“A little slice of heaven,” Jamison said.)

Wander over to Clovis and Portales, where the Taco Box restaurants have served as the “Hometown Tacotorium” since 1969. While in Clovis, check out the Foxy Drive In and imagine the days when Buddy Holly and the Crickets took a break there.

In La Mesa, you simply must eat at Chope’s, which has, Jamison said, “the best chile rellenos in the state.”

And then there’s the hippies-meet-bikers Ancient Way Cafe in Ramah; the Laguna Superete, where your 20- minute wait will be rewarded with an extraordinary green chile cheeseburger (or a Kool-Aid Pickle. Don’t ask.); and Lucky Boy Chinese Food and Hamburgers in Albuquerque.

“Yes, you have to see it to believe it,” Jamison said of Lucky Boy. “It’s the only place in New Mexico, and I would wager anywhere, that you can get a green chile cheeseburger with an egg foo yung patty on top of it.

“My husband says it’s pretty good.”

“Fire” Sale at the Cowden Cafe

PlazaCafePosterAndy and Daniel Razatos, owners of the historic Plaza Cafe on the Santa Fe Plaza, are still reeling from a fire last weekend that put their well-loved eatery temporarily out of commission. But that hasn’t stopped them from feeding the hungry hordes at the Cowden Cafe, which they operate inside the New Mexico History Museum. To sweeten the deal for customers longing for the turkey-cashew mole and other delights they whip up at the Plaza, the Razatos have lowered prices at the Cowden, including a delicious offer of 99-cent desserts.

You read that right.

And you just might have to hurry if you aim to beat the crowds of people who, in at least a few cases, are snapping up not one, not two, not three, but grocery sacks full of desserts, take heed: The cafe opens at 11 a.m. and stays open until 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

On Friday, dessert selections included flan, red-velvet cake, white cake and a gooey-luscious chocolate cake.

But that’s not all.

Besides their desserts, the Razatos are offering fire-sale prices on their salads, sandwiches and daily soup choices, which on Friday included tortilla soup and (…wait for it…) MENUDO! What could be a more culturally specific dining choice during the annual Santa Fe Fiesta? (Well, other than roasted head of Zozobra, perhaps.)

A cup of menudo, packed with legendary health-giving properties, costs only $1. And a soup-salad-sandwich combo? A mere $4.

patio lunch kidsThe best part is that you can then enjoy them on the second-floor cafe’s outdoor terrace overlooking the Palace of the Governors Courtyard and the rooftops of downtown Santa Fe.

You don’t have to be a museum-goer to eat at the cafe — although we think you’ll be enticed to buy an admission ticket once you get a glimpse of the interior. Just enter through the Washington Avenue doors and tell the nice folks at the guard station that you’re here for the chow. They’ll send you on up.

While at the cafe, log onto our free wifi or just enjoy some time with your dining companions.

The Cowden Café is named for a historic ranching family who built the JAL Ranch. From 1883 to 1915, the JAL Ranch (which lent its name to the southeastern New Mexico town of Jal) was the open-range home to 40,000 head of cattle and a part of New Mexico history that included the likes of Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight, skirmishes with Comanches, and tales of scrabbling out the pioneer life in dugouts and covered wagons.

At its peak, the JAL occupied much of what is now Lea County, east and south into Texas.Its legacy was detailed in Michael Pettit’s book, Riding for the Brand: 150 Years of Cowden Ranching (University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), which won a New Mexico Book Award for Best Southwest History. Michael will talk about the JAL and family ranching lore at 2 pm on Sunday, Sept. 26, in the History Museum Auditorium. The lecture is free with museum admission (Sundays are free to NM residents) and will be followed by coffee and cobbler featuring fruit grown by New Mexico farmers, courtesy of the New Mexico Department of Agriculture.

You’ve waited long enough. How about some food?

sandwich casepastry cabinet

turkey sammich 99-cent dessertsflanwhite cake