There’s a lot of talk in hoity-toity restaurants and among foodies these days about “nose to tail” dining. This sort of talk should not be discouraged; it’s only good for chefs and diners alike.

There aren’t a lot of savory items on offer at Dulce, the new bakery and sweetshop that has dropped a cream-filled and flaky-crusted bomb on the South Capitol district. But one can find there a quiche as delectable as any ever offered in, as far as I’m concerned, the history of the world.

There are a lot of questions lingering in the minds of voters about what happens now that the midterm elections are over. How will the results affect the economy? Health care? Financial regulation? But one question is particularly vulnerable to shifting sentiments in Congress: Will Jack Daniel’s birthday become a national holiday?

Who among us does not know the shame of the bussed plate? There you are, sated in the completion of a fine meal, when staff comes by and clears your empty plate, revealing a bizarre flurry of crumbs and morsels that were hidden beneath the rim. It’s like waking up to a murder scene in your apartment. Is this a dream? Is this a set-up? Did I enact this violence with my own hands and mouth in some kind of blackout rage?

El Campanario restaurant looks as garish as the Vegas Strip on its faux belfry exterior, but the inside offers a few surprises.

Earlier this year, in a kind of hazy beef frenzy brought on by the New Mexico Beef Council’s Gate-to-Plate tour, I made a handshake deal with a couple of ranchers to buy half of a steer—not as a partial pet, but as more meat than I can possibly eat. It’s the best food purchase I’ve ever made.

One must be resigned these days to encountering Taco Bell. The fast-food chain is a ubiquitous presence on the social-media frontier, not to mention on nearly 6,000 street corners in the US. But I find myself reluctant to encounter Taco Bell at the corner of Cerrillos Road and Alta Vista Street.

Domestic abusers apologize for their behavior, and they often mean it. But that doesn’t stop them from doing it again. It’s the same with drunk drivers and other drug addicts. Why would we expect it to be any different for corporations—in particular for corporate “farms” with a history of health and safety violations?

A bored chef is a boring chef. Nobody wants to go out to eat with the image in his or her mind of a tired stove jockey—a resentful grunt in a dirty apron endlessly churning out cookie-cutter meals and pushing steaks off the line with stamped and approved regularity like auto parts on a conveyor belt.

The gaudiest expressions of Santa Fe style are far from unique to Santa Fe. Much of the Southwest—along the trail of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, in particular—still bears the hallmarks of a fantasy created for tourists largely by hotel magnate and evil marketing genius Fred Harvey.