Another weekend, and another trip to Santa Fe. You may be noticing a bit of a pattern here...it seems that just about any time I have a craving for sushi, I seem to concoct an excuse to travel north to Santa Fe. Granted, growing up in the DC metropolitan area, it felt like everything was a 45 minute drive away - going ten miles to school, traveling up to Maryland to visit a friend, or even just a short two mile jaunt to the dry cleaners as my mother would always find ways to tack on extra, unannounced errands (oh, the church is only a mile out of the way, and CVS is just across the street...). So, the drive up to Santa Fe (all 50 miles of it in a 75 mph zone), always comes across as pleasantly fast...especially when you know what's waiting for you.
One of the things I love about Santa Fe is how extensive and pedestrian friendly their old town is. There're only a few things that I enjoy more in town than walking around while people watching and window shopping. And Santa Fe never seems to be short on either, especially with festivals just about every other weekend. This past weekend the whole plaza had been cordoned off for local craftsmen to sell their wares - about 100 stalls in all. And while walking past their booths often leaves me with a puzzlement over who would buy a turquoise and red corral pinkie ring featuring a fertility spirit carving or matching shade hats and pillow sets for your favorite pooches (I wish I was joking about that one...), it's still fun to see the creativity and skill that goes into the goods on display.
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| Street festival on the plaza in Santa Fe. |
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| More of the festival and the plaza. |
After a brief stop at Marble's taproom, I made my way down to Shohko where I met Kim and some of her family. In writing about Shohko, I fear that I'll eventually run out of ways to say really, really, really frickin' good sushi...perhaps words such as fantabulous, spectagrific, or awerockinating will become the norm as I exhaust my SAT fed vocabulary. Our order consisted of sea bass nigiri, high toro nigiri, smoked pike nigiri, the house sashimi plate, the Alaskan roll, the chef's choice roll, and that night's special, the lobster roll. I fear that I still am lamenting the fact that I didn't get a photo of the lobster roll...in addition to it being a special that I can't order every time I go back! The lobster-filled sushi yumminess was, simply put, to die for. And, to complete the aesthetic aspect of the plate, the shell of the lobster where the meat came from was placed to frame the roll perfectly. The chef's choice roll I do have a picture of...this time around it was wild salmon and avocado on top, with asparagus, yellow tail, and something crunchy inside. The crunchy ingredient was pure genius as it provided the perfect contrast in texture to the rice, fish, and avocado. To think, the first few times I went to Shohko I wasn't impressed with their rolls...maybe this was due to being spoiled by Noda's, and maybe this was due to just not knowing what to order...
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| The chef's choice roll. |
My culinary excursions for the weekend did not end there, no sir! Sunday afternoon found Mark and me headed down to Casa Rodena Winery in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque where we met our running buddy Liz and her friend Sam. When I first moved to the land of enchantment (or entrapment, take your pick), the wine festivals left me sadly dissapointed - the Merlots didn't taste like Merlots but rather something fruity, the Zinfandels tasted dry (did they just mislabel those two?), half the wines were gimicky (re: red chile, chocolate, etc.), and the Snozzberry wines tasted nothing like snozberries...okay, maybe my memory is a little fuzzy at that point, after all we are talking about wine *festivals*, but you get the picture. Lately I've been learning, though, that some of these wineries actually know what they're doing! Imagine that... After going through a complete tasting, we settled on a bottle of the Vigonier (not quite as sweet as I was expecting, so it really hit the spot for a hot, summer afternoon!), which we enjoyed over the picnic of cheese, hummus, fruit, and other delectables that Liz and Sam brought. For those of you that haven't ventured that way yet, I highly recommend wine and a picnic as Casa Rodena...very pleasant atmosphere; and, as you can see below, it has four things that the majority of New Mexico is sorely lacking: water, shade, trees, and greenery (note that the presence of trees in New Mexico does not necessitate the presence of greenery)!
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| The grounds at Casa Rodena. So much green! |
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