9 Places To Eat Healthier In Santa Fe
If your goal is to eat a healthier diet while on vacay, you’re traveling in the right place !! Santa Fe has plenty of spots offering delicious healthy fare. Living here for almost 3 months, there is no way I could eat delicious New Mexican fare everyday. (burritos, enchiladas, tacos, rellenos, and so on) Or I could but I would definitely need to buy new pants! HA!
EAT HEALTHIER SANTA FE
Santa Fe Vinaigrette: Santa Fe Vinaigrette lives in a landmark adobe house at the end of a dusty lane in the historic northeast of town. Smaller and cozier than their other locations, with a gnarled old apricot shading the brick patio, the OG Vinny features fat double adobe walls dotted with Judith Bever’s produce-centric oil paintings, signature bright green tile, and happy bar pendants. This is where it all started!
They planted 12 trees here and a whole bunch of grasses and perennials!
The first Vinaigrette opened in 2008, in a funky adobe house in downtown Santa Fe, but the idea was germinated three years prior, on ten parched acres in northern New Mexico that was slowly becoming a sustainable farm. Around the same time she was learning how to grow food in the high desert, with its scarce water and slim soils, owner/founder Erin Wade had the idea for a restaurant that served delicious and satisfying entrée salads—a place that made healthy eating joyful and easy. She began developing the menus and concept with the produce she was growing.
This synchronicity underlies the company’s ethos and operations today, with the original Nambe farm supplying seasonal products (mixed greens, arugula, kale, peppers, peaches, apricots, cherries, apples, tomatoes, scallions, basil, heirloom potatoes, beans, mint, and eggs) for the New Mexico restaurants and then composting their organic waste into nutrient-rich soil amendments for the garden beds.
Vinaigrette Santa Fe was followed by Vinaigrette ABQ in 2012, on historic Route 66, and Austin in 2016, under the shade of a four hundred year old Live Oak just off of bustling South Congress. What motivates their expansion is not drive for world salad domination, but a desire to knit themselves into communities where they can be a positive and meaningful presence.
My favorite salads are:
ASIAN CHOPPED SALAD -Chopped Napa & red cabbage and rice noodles, with julienned red bell peppers, scallions, shredded carrots, cilantro and peanuts. Tossed with a miso ginger vinaigrette and topped with crispy noodles.
THE NUTTY PEAR-FESSOR -Balsamic-roasted pears, bacon crumbles, toasted pecan halves and earthy blue cheese served with tender greens and ruby port vinaigrette. I love adding flank steak to this!
Their BLACK BEAN & KALE NACHOS are to die for too!! Soooo delish with avocado and cilantro cream, and fresh tortilla chips!
The tonics are so exquisite too!! Love THE PEPINO -cucumber, lime juice, and club soda and the KALE APPLE SPRITZ- Alkalizing kale and apple juice finished with lemon, ginger and seltzer
Root 66 Cafe: Bringing you the best plant-based food in Santa Fe, Root 66 Cafe strives to use as many organic and local ingredients as possible. Enjoy a deli with scrumptious salads & sandwiches from Monday – Thursday, along with various treats from JACK’S MAGIC BAKERY.
This is the only place in New Mexico where you can get JACK’S Original Vegan Biscochitos too!!!
On Fridays, come back to experience a day dedicated to presenting JACK’S MAGIC BAKERY; you’ll find vegan versions of favorites like challah, babka, rugelach, and much more!
Highly recommend the Cranberry Chickpea Salad Sandwich-sweet & tender base of chickpeas mixed with celery, red onion, shredded carrots, and dried cranberries. Served with butter lettuce on a vegan challah sub from Jack’s Magic Bakery. The Baby "Crab" Cakes are soooo scrumptious too!!! Made from a base of hearts of palm & chickpeas & seasoned like the sea. Served with a drizzle of cocktail sauce or lemon aioli or be adventurous and get both! The House Made Organic Iced Oat Milk Matcha Tea’s are not to be missed either!
The Jerusalem Bagels are simply divine too! Although it is called a bagel, this bread is not boiled and it originates in the Middle East. Found all over the Old City of Jerusalem, this ultimate “bagel” is shaped into an oblong ring and covered with a sweet sesame crunch. Served w/ olive oil and za’atar for dipping.
The Jewish Rye Boule is an excellent choice too! This round loaf full of very flavorful caraway seeds is absolutely perfect to take home and make sandwiches with!!
Melvin and Henry love their organic and vegan treats too from the Magic Bark-ery!
Counter Culture: Counter Culture Cafe was established in 1996. They use only the finest locally sourced organic ingredients including Fano Bread, Aroma Organic Coffee, Local Sprouts, 100% Real Maple Syrup, Non GMO Oil, Organic Greens, Horizon Yogurt, New Mexico Beef, Filtered H2O, Redbird Natural Chicken and Ecco To-Go Containers to name a few. I really love everything they make but this trip I had to try the Fall Salad- mixed greens, roasted beets, bleu cheese, chimayo chile walnuts & balsamic vinaigrette and I added roasted chicken!!!! It was so delish!
Lin really loves the Tuna salad sandwich- lettuce, tomato, red onion, sprouts, walnuts, celery, mayo, dijon mustard on whole wheat bread.
Thai On Canyon: Most delicious Thai restaurant on Canyon Road! We loved our lunch here.
Highly recommend Fresh Thai Rolls - green leaves, cucumber, carrots, mints leaves, Thai basil, bean sprouts, thin rice noodles, cooked shrimp with homemade hoisin sauce. The Papaya Salad is also incredible! Green papaya, cherry tomatoes, green beans, roasted unsalted peanut, muddled with a hot chili-lime dressing. The PAD THAI (NATIONAL DISH OF THAILAND) is some of the best Pad Thai I have ever tasted. Thin rice noodles sautéed in tamarind seasoning sauce, shallot, baked tofu, sweet radish, egg, bean sprouts, green onion, crushed peanut (optional), chili powder (optional). And the THAI STYLE CASHEW NUT STIR FRY has me drooling just thinking about it—roasted cashew nuts, onions, scallions, red & green bell pepper, Thai dried chili & Thai chili paste.
Modern General: Modern General feed & Seed opened in SANTA FE in 2015, but was in the works before that! Building off the mission of their sister restaurant, Vinaigrette, they wanted to bring health and delight into more aspects of their customers’ lives and to create a community gathering place that embodied the true spirit of a general store.
The motto “nothing you don’t need” inspires them—food and goods produced naturally, that don’t junk up your life or body with harmful additives or clutter; only the essential.
The food and smoothies are SOOOOOOO good!!!!!!!
https://moderngeneralfeedandseed.com/
Opuntia Cafe: Airy, relaxing space full of cacti and succulents that reads as part greenhouse, part teahouse. The green and growing interior design matches the intentions behind the menu, which serves up healthy, light and plant-based meals, all of which come on plates piled high with colorful vegetables.
Tender Fire Kitchen- The best pizza and salad ever!! Their dough rises for 48-72 hours. It’s a practice of patience, trust & unpredictability. Definitely a labor of love! It’s the listening and attention to the weather, the moisture in the air, the texture of the dough! They cook the pizza in 60-90 seconds flat in a 800 degree oven, turning the raw ingredients into a universally understood and enjoyed experience. This balance between slowness and speed, tenderness and fire can be found in the quintessential essence of the heart, timing.
When you work with natural leaven, you are giving the bacteria enough time to break down the fructan, which is what most people that are gluten free are actually sensitive to. This means that the dough not only has a more complex flavor profile, but that it is the healthiest and most digestible pizza dough you can eat!
They work with local farmers to grow the most incredible ingredients for the pizzas and salads. How far food travels not only impacts the world, but changes the flavor and nutrient impact of the food. They work with farmers that tend the land in regenerative ways, bringing health back to the soil, back to the community + all the way to our mouths!!
It’s SOOO good y’all! Dates on pizza is definitely a new favorite for me!! And definitely get one of their salads! 🤤 And try their vegan pizza too! Catch my video here!
Cleopatra’s- Exquisite Mediterranean food!! The Falafel Sandwich is sooo delightful. Ground Garbanzo beans with a unique blend of spices and parsley garnished with sliced tomato & served with homemade sauce on a pita bread. Incredible Gyros too! Lamb, lettuce, onion, tomato, fresh homemade sauce served on a pita bread.
Santa Fe Farmers Market- Voted one of the “Top Ten Farmers’ Markets” by Sunset Magazine, the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market is one of the oldest, largest, and most successful growers’ markets in the country. Serving more than 150 farmers and producers in 15 Northern New Mexico counties, the Market brings fresh food, education, and fun to our community and promotes small farms and sustainable agriculture in Northern New Mexico.
Unlike most farmers’ markets in the US, the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market assures that all products sold by its vendors are always locally grown by the people selling them. 100% of the vegetables, fruits, and nursery plants available at Santa Fe Farmers’ Markets are grown right here in northern New Mexico. The same goes for at least 70% of the ingredients and materials used to make all processed and craft items. Furthermore, no reselling is permitted. That means that the people doing the growing and producing are the same smiling folks who sell those products to you at Market.
It truly is the best market I have ever visited!!!!!
I love that the market is twice a week and allows us to cook delicious organic meals at home!
https://santafefarmersmarket.com
Have a favorite place to eat a little healthier I should try?!! Let me know in the comments!
