Sante Fe (#254, 3/17/13) – 50
As I’ve said many times, New Orleans is not really a place to look for great Mexican food. However, Santa Fe was a pretty good stop. A nice, casual place with covered patio seating which is great when the weather is good. Located on Esplanade Avenue, it’s a good stop after a run to the Fairgrounds for some horses. Assuming around Jazzfest it’s a madhouse.
Interestingly enough, this place was started by a German chef and more bills itself as Southwestern food and not Mexican, again confirming the lack of Mexican food here.
The word on the street was that this place had outstanding bean dip – and sure enough, it did. I’m not really a big bean dip guy, but it was definitely worth a try.
For the main course, I went with some sort of combination that included a chicken enchilada, beef relleno and a pork tamale. All solid choices. Again, nothing spectacular, but it was good.
Food-wise, my grade is a 30 out of 50. It was solid, but not great. The atmosphere was very good (other than the crazy-annoying parrots in the trees); I’ll give it 20 out of 30. Service was solid as well, however, my big knock would be that I went on a Saturday at about noon once and they only served brunch – and the brunch was awful. If you don’t like juevos rancheros, you’re out of luck. It seems to me that brunch at a Mexian )or Southwestern) place should still have quesadillas and fajitas. But regardless, that was pretty annoying, so instead of knocking the food, I’m taking those points off service, giving it a zero for service.
Final score: 50.
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