Food Blog:
Cook In.
Eat Out.
Miss Tenacity.
New Mexico.
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Thursday, March 30
Lucky Girl
That's me, all right.
Let me tell you about the restaurant fine dining "sweet spot". I've even drawn a little graph for you to help explain. The curve is what is known as the "diminishing returns" curve, and you'll see why in a moment.
IN GENERAL, when you eat at restaurants you will get a very large return for little additional monies relative to cheaper establishments. Take for example Taco Bell. You can eat a meal's worth of food for as little as $2, but the quality will be pretty low.
Next up is a local diner, represented by the lowest notch on the "quality" axis. You are getting decent food for a pretty cheap price - possibly not much more than that fast food joint. Frontier restaurant fits in on this notch, for reference.
For a moderate jump in dollars (barely moving at all to the right along the increasing cost axis), you will move vertically much farther up in quality. This represents a better investment of your gustatory dollar, and in reality might be a middle range cafe or trattoria getting $10-18 for entrees, or a "low high-brow" place such as Slate Street Cafe or Senor Lucky's. THIS IS WHERE YOU SHOULD SPEND YOUR NON-DIVE DOLLARS - NOTCH #2.
Now on the less steeply upward slope, we get to notch #3, where many people DO spend much of their fine dining dollars. This in day to day terms is going to be a restaurant with entrees in the $20-40 range and pretty-classy service. This is where Ambrozia, Geronimo, and Gruet Steakhouse park themselves. Dinner for two with all the fixin's will be $100-150.
The last notch represents the "cream of the crop" - the $400 sushi meal in New York City, the $250 lunch at the French Laundry, et cetera. You are getting food that is excellent and noticably better than even the 3rd notch level, but you are paying as much as 5-10 times as much for that experience. (After that point you'll notice the graph actually dips down - I don't have a poetic essay about that phenomenon, but suffice it to say that you can pay TOO much for something that will underwhelm your expectations.)
Now, on to Senor Lucky's, the object of this post and the site of my meal last night.
Pictures were not taken of every dish, nor did the few resulting photos even turn out that well, but I'll post them regardless.
Stacked baby-back ribs served with drunken beans and coleslaw
Tortilla soup with 5 garnishes
The baby-back ribs were fantastic: sweet and spicy with not too much fattyness or gristle. My tortilla soup was a tomato-puree base, poured in front of me into the bowl already loaded with garnishes of queso fresco, sour cream, avocado, tortilla strips, and cilantro. When the hot soup hit the sour cream the aromas coming off the bowl were spectacular.
Prior to this I had a small caesar salad, perfectly salty and rich with a hint of anchovy brinyness. It was served with a fresh grilled garlic pita bread instead of croutons, and green chile in the dressing. Stunning salad for just $5.
Finishing out the meal we uncharacteristically opted for TWO desserts, 1) a Mexican Milkshake with cinnamon, nutmeg and rich dark chocolate and 2) Tart Tatin with vanilla ice cream. Both were very good but not "transcendant" - definitely rich and satisfying nonetheless.
Rounding out the experience we had a doting waiter, a server, and a gracious hostess to answer our questions and make recommendations. The dining room was warmly decorated with leather seating and quiet conversations, including our own.
For all this, we paid (with tip)..... $58.
Contrast this with a similar meal that was just a hair better in overall experience and quality of food. On that occasion we ordered somewhat pricier entrees and wine, but the grand total was double the expense of Senor Lucky's.
Next visit to Santa Fe, we'll be back again to try more inventive dishes from the Geronimo guys, who've hit upon a fantastic formula with their new venture.
Time posted: 20:56 [permalink]
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CONTACT ME: tenacity -at- gmail.com
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