One Course, One Pour, Three Santa Fe Plaza Restaurants
A guided walking lunch through downtown Santa Fe, where the history arrives between courses and every landmark stays outside.
Downtown Santa Fe is compact enough that three restaurants, a specialty shop and six historic landmarks fit inside a loop of a mile and a half to two miles. This walk covers that loop over lunch. Each restaurant plates one course and pours one drink to go with it, and the guide fills the blocks in between with the history of the streets you are crossing.
The tour needs four guests to run, and a single booking can hold up to sixteen. Tables are shared with whoever else booked that day.
The route holds steady while the table changes. The operator names five places it may bring you to, and a given day lands on four of them: three restaurants, then the specialty shop where dessert happens.
Taste of Santa Fe Wine and Dine LunchThree plated courses with pairings, one specialty shop, 2.5 to 3 hours on foot.www.viator.comWhat Lands on the Table
The food comes plated. The operator's own list of what it may serve runs to a prawn cake with sangria at one stop, salmon with a wine pairing at another, green chile chicken pasta at a third.
New Mexican cooking leans hard on chile, and this walk does not soften it. The operator says the food can be spicy and steers anyone with serious dietary restrictions toward a different tour. Non-alcoholic drinks are poured for anyone who prefers them.
What Gets Poured, and Where Dessert Lands
Wine carries most of the pairings. The listing also names margaritas and local beers, which for a New Mexican lunch is the honest range.
A course and a pour at every stop adds up faster than it reads on paper. A New Mexico Magazine writer who walked this tour came away with one piece of advice: pace yourself early, because the last stop is dessert.
The fourth stop trades the restaurant for a specialty shop, and that is where dessert turns up: a chocolate elixir and a sampling at one of the operator's candidates, a daily cookie or scoop of ice cream at another. Gratuity for the restaurant servers is already inside the ticket. Your guide's is not.
Six Landmarks, All From the Outside
The history on this tour happens on the sidewalk. The guide stops in front of six landmarks and goes into none of them, which the operator states plainly on its own site.
- The Plaza, where the walk starts and where the city did too
- The Palace of the Governors, the oldest public building in the United States
- The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, built in 1866
- Loretto Chapel, with the story of its 1888 staircase told from the doorstep
- San Miguel Chapel, the oldest church structure in the country, built in 1610
- The Roundhouse, the state capitol, and the reason it was built round
Loretto and San Miguel each charge their own admission to anyone walking back afterwards. San Miguel posts 7 dollars for general admission and takes cards only.
Who Is Walking You Around
Food Tour New Mexico bills itself as Santa Fe's original food tour and dates itself to 2010, though by the founder's own account the first tour did not walk until May 2011. He grew up here and arrived at this through art rather than kitchens, by way of a fine arts degree and a job as assistant director at a gallery on Canyon Road, and he describes being taken around town as a child by his mother and grandmother for margaritas and history.
The rest of the roster reads local in the same way. One guide came from Rhode Island twenty-three years ago and has spent thirty-five years as an international tour manager, on all seven continents. One holds a history degree from Amherst, guided campus tours there, and turns up in local film and theater between walks. One took a master's at the University of New Mexico in the town he grew up in.
Reservations have to be made ahead, and the calendar is narrow. The tour runs Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, meeting at 10:45 AM on the Plaza. The exact corner arrives with your ticket. A day that does not reach the four-guest minimum can be called off, which is worth knowing if the afternoon around it is already booked.
Two refund windows apply here, and they are different lengths:
- The booking made through the card above is fully refundable up to 24 hours before departure
- The operator's own page asks for 72 hours of notice, and handles anything inside that window case by case
Cancelling early clears both. It is a real walk, a mile and a half to two miles, and the operator asks for a moderate level of fitness. The walk finishes about six blocks from where it started, early enough in the afternoon that the rest of the day is still yours, and the guide will point you toward wherever you are heading next.