Restaurant Review: Tabla de Los Santos and Secreto Bar and Loggia

Secret admirer

By: Bill Kohlhaase
Published online: Friday, July 27, 2012
Appeared in: Pasateimpo

Like all great crafts, mixology — the art of making a mixed drink — is part tradition and part invention. Consider the Old-Fashioned, a libation that’s enjoyed a number of revivals over a century and a half, most recently thanks to Mad Men’s Don Draper. Originally a combination of whiskey, water, sugar, and bitters, the very ingredients that first defined the word cocktail, it has seen a host of variations over the years, including the addition of muddled cherries and oranges, presumably to cover the taste of bad Prohibition bootleg whiskey. Later, soda water, Curaçao, and brandy made appearances. Today, ritzy New York watering holes are known to make variations with other spirits, including rum.

Secreto Bar and Loggia, inside the venerable Hotel St. Francis, is a sort of shrine to the art of mixing drinks. You might say the staff does things the old-fashioned way. The drinks menu hosts a page of vintage cocktails — the Cable Car, the Negroni, the Hurricane, and, yes, the Old-Fashioned — and a page of innovative, one-of-a-kind potions. Likewise, the kitchen at the adjoining Tabla de Los Santos boasts classic New Mexico dishes done with contemporary twists. Together, these establishments serve food and drink that, exemplifying both tradition and artistic invention, can be seen as a symbol for our city’s once-and-future culture.

Secreto is a most distinguished-looking room. It resembles a monk’s cloister or a sorcerer’s lair, sufficiently dark despite a street-side wall of glass. Both Secreto and Tabla emphasize freshly prepared, local ingredients. Proof of this came one Saturday, when we spotted Tabla chef Estevan García wearing his kitchen jacket, embroidered with the Tabla name, making the rounds at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. Secreto makes its own syrups for cocktails. Tabla makes its own chicos to stir into its pinto beans.

Friends and I spent an early evening in Secreto (three’s not a crowd when the third is the designated driver) and enjoyed drinks, Tabla’s appetizers, and its formal service. The room was nearly empty; everyone was out on the walled patio and the “loggia” that serves as the hotel’s front porch. Secreto’s “seasonal garden-to-glass cocktails” list is the place where bar manager Chris Milligan, something of a personality in the world of mixology, shows off his creations and those of his staff. We shared a Spicy Secreto, the drink that put Secreto on the map at the 2010 national “Shake It Up!” competition. It’s an exotic concoction of spirits, cucumbers, and lime juice. On first taste, we thought “Cucumber Caipirinha” might be a better name because of the refined Brazilian cachaça (fermented sugar-cane juice). Then the sweetened cucumber flavor gave way to something flowery — must be the St. Germain elderflower liqueur — which finally yielded to the tingle of red chile. The unraveling is so involved that the experience is like finishing a good mystery novel. You can’t put it down.

The Kickin’ in Dixon, a tribute to the Dixon Farms orchards, turned out to be a rainbow in a glass. Pomegranate liqueur weighted with agave syrup sat quietly at the bottom, while Partida Blanco tequila scented with lime and apples sported heat from a jalapeño. We were advised not to stir, and good advice it was. The drink not only changed color deeper in the glass, but it sweetened, gradually, like a kitten shown some affection, and then followed it all with the scratch of spice.

With the drinks we had chips, a flavorful but mild salsa, and a thick, rich, lime-spiked guacamole. We divided a pair of delicious small tamales (tamalitos) — one in red chile, one in green — and a trio of pequeños (slider-sized burgers) — one of beef with a brilliant red chile sauce, one bison with green chile, and one lamb with a Roquefort cheese that matched the lamb’s gaminess.

We confirmed the excellence of the kitchen’s work during another visit, when we sat on the attractive patio with a plate of carne-adovada-stuffed ravioli and the wonderful Ensalada Repollo de las Nubes — red-cabbage salad with bacon and Roquefort. The surprising chile relleno was a plump, unbreaded poblano generously stuffed with rice, creamy goat cheese, and spinach. An Angus rib-eye had all the character you’d expect from meat aged 21 days. The roasted carrots and potatoes in a red chile demiglace were perfectly toothsome.

Old goat farmer that I am, I was sorely tempted by the goat-milk flan but bowed to my companion’s wish for the chocolate-almond torte, a sophisticated, nutty mix, not too much one thing or another.

Then there was the time we had lunch at the bar — two stuffed sopaipillas (chicken and ground beef) smothered in that fine red chile, with calabacitas and meaty pintos laced with chicos — and watched the bartender make a smoked-sage margarita. Magic!