Hand me a sealed plastic bag of so-called “food” on an airplane and my instinct instinct is to say, “If any portion of the high cost of my airplane ticket is justified by the expense of this nasty little sack of over-processed by-products, please give me the home address of your CEO because I desperately want to wake him in the night by ramming these airplane-shaped graham crackers down his throat.”

Remember when La Plazuela restaurant—the house eatery for La Fonda hotel—was like an all-terrain skate bowl? Stepping from the lobby into the dining room was like entering a lopsided universe of chunky stone that drained toward a rocky vortex at the center. Not only was sure footing unlikely, but tables, plates and drinks listed with the tilt of the bowl. It was like eating in a dramatic, frozen ocean.

Red patio umbrellas face yellow patio umbrellas across Old Santa Fe Trail and on opposite sides of the Santa Fe River. The colorful umbrellas on sturdy, upright poles are not exactly flags flying from pikes, but I nonetheless think of them as signs of the clash between two new restaurants: a brasserie versus bistro brawl.

Martín Rios—steeped in Southwestern tradition, trained in French technique, given to Asian flair, as capable with pastry and dessert as he is with entrées ranging from Old World to New, and generally global in his grokking of gastronomy—has finally opened a restaurant of his own that feels capable of containing his range.

One of these years, I am going to rock the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta. I am going to hit the tastings, the luncheons, the tours—you name it and I will be there, and whatever is being served will be in my mouth. But not this year. Fortunately, there was the “Harvest Wine Dinner” at Joe’s.

In Santa Fe, where the locavore scene has been spreading like monkeys without a chaperone for several years, touting ingredients as “local” no longer cuts it: You’ve got to name specific farmers. Is it farmwashing? Neighborwashing? Of just the beginning of a good thing?

The USDA definition of "natural" means a so-labelled steak not only can legally come from a penned-in, grain-fed, cannibalistic steer pumped up on antibiotics and freaky hormones, it most likely does.

At a technically illegal, kind of racy, strangely elegant, more-or-less underground supper club, a prominent local chef sitting next to me had this to say on tasting the rack of lamb with rosemary-salt-dusted peaches and salsa verde: “I just came in my pants.”

Among a slew of allegedly cultural events, the Santa Fe School of Cooking has collaborated with Santa Fe 400th organizers to create Sabores de Santa Fe: A Tapestry of Taste. Ten Santa Fe chefs and food gurus will offer demonstrations, workshops and tastings at Fort Marcy Park on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 5 and 6.

Even against the monochromatic face of agribusiness, there are thousands and thousands of small, independent, innovative, hard-headed, charismatic, off-beat—unconventional, even—farmers who are doing things their own way. Lisa M Hamilton found three and wrote a book.