A very food-forward six days spent in northern New Mexico
Photo-Illustration: The Strategist. Photos by Natasha Pickowicz. Everyone knows that person who spends weeks sniffing around travel blogs, going deep into Tripadvisor rabbit holes, collecting Google docs from friends of friends, and creating A Beautiful Mind–style spreadsheets to come up with the best vacations and itineraries possible.
At the Albuquerque airport, we picked up our Hertz rental car, an SUV that made us feel like we were in an Uber Plus. Because Albuquerque was our starting point, we kept the loop of the trip to Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Ojo Caliente, Taos, and then back down to Albuquerque. Driving was a big part of the whole thing, but none of the drives was more than an hour and a half or two hours long, just enough to appreciate the surreal landscapes.
Day 2 10 a.m.: Grab green-chile croissants for breakfast There was one bakery I wanted to visit before we left for Santa Fe, so we drove over there on our way out to get iced coffee and pastries. It’s called Ihatov , and I found it because I saw that my favorite Japanese restaurant in Greenpoint, Ashbox, follows them on Instagram. My mentality was that I wanted to try anything that had green chiles on it, so I got the green-chile–and–cheddar croissant. It was absolutely delicious.
When I was in San Diego, I went to this used bookstore that I love and bought this cookbook from a place called Coyote Cafe , more for design purposes than for content. It was published in the late ’80s or early ’90s. For dinner, we wanted to go to Paloma , a Mexican restaurant known for its mezcal menu. But when we got there, it was completely booked for the evening. So instead, we ordered takeout. The restaurant had a big bar area, and we did a tasting flight of mezcals while we waited for our food. We got shredded-duck-confit flautas, steak tacos, and braised black beans.
7:30 p.m.: Taste more mole That night, we sat at the wide, polished wooden bar at Sazón , another Mexican restaurant where the chef, Fernando Olea, was nominated for a James Beard. He’s an older man, and he walks around the dining room checking in with everyone. It was the fanciest restaurant we went to, with gleaming terra-cotta tile and mirror mosaics and stapled-leather banquettes. But there was also all of this local art on the walls, a lot of which was for sale.
Because Bandelier is so massive, after we were done, we decided to drive 25 minutes to another trailhead called the Tsankawi, which isn’t so much about the dwellings. It has a bigger focus on nature and being outside, and it was definitely a less populated trail. It was really nice to have both of those experiences.
Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs Resort & Spa Book at Ojo Spa Resorts Buy Day 5 10 a.m.: Start the day with a hike After breakfast, we decided to go on another hike, and it ended up being the most unbelievable one of the trip. There are trailheads that start on the perimeter of the resort. You walk two minutes and all of a sudden you’re off the hotel property and in the backcountry. The trail I picked is called Joseph’s Mine Trail, a five-mile hike to a cluster of mica mines.
I really wanted to see Earthship Biotecture , which is, I think, the world’s largest self-sustaining residential community. The occupants live off the grid via a system of solar power and DIY thermal insulation that was developed by some hippie scientists in the ’70s. Buildings like theirs could be just pragmatic structures, but I was blown away by how wacky-looking the architecture is — kind of like Antoni Gaudí meets Mad Max with do-it-yourself assemblage.
We had iced tea with fresh oregano sprigs and a salad with many different small radishes sliced in half, toasted fennel seeds, poppy seeds, pumpkin seeds, and tons of torn herbs; it was dressed in this nutty vinaigrette. The second course was half of a roasted sweet potato on braised heirloom beans with a drizzle of Tyrrell’s housemade hot sauce, her housemade wood-roasted flatbread, and torn parsley.
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