http://www.sfreporter.com/articles.sec-26-1-food-writing.html Amaury Torres has a dream. I have one, too. OK, so his is far more inspirational, starting in 1994 on a raft leaving Havana, Cuba, and traveling through Guantánamo, Panama and Miami before ending up on Highway 14 in the San Marcos area south of Santa Fe.]]> Pupusas were once my Proustian madeleine—a food that transported me so instantly and completely back to El Salvador that I could swear I heard roosters crowing and men hacking at trees with their machetes. ]]> For 20 years, Rick Smith, former president and CEO of the American Liver Foundation, wanted to own a restaurant. But he went about achieving his dream in a decidedly un-Santa Fe way.---After interview]]> It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say I’ve been stalking the vegan breakfast burrito created somewhere on Aztec Street for some time now. Though long past my vegan phase (which, I’ll admit, lasted le]]> In the film Tiny Furniture, writer, director and budding indie phenom Lena Dunham plays Aura, a recent college grad struggling to find herself after having moved back into her childhood home in New York City.]]> You must try everything once before you’re allowed to say you don’t like it.]]> Pity chef Juan Bochenski.

The former executive sous chef at Jumby Bay, a resort in warm, beachy Antigua, Bochenski moved to Santa Fe in cold, snowy November to become the Anasazi Restaurant’s new executive chef.]]> I’ve never seen Azur so packed.I walk past the small Mediterranean bistro, the semi-new venture by Ristra owner Eric Lamalle, pretty much every time I scoot out of the house for a last-minute bottle]]> Santa Fe isn’t exactly a mecca for early adopters. We’re still in the nascent stages of the cupcake craze that hit the coastal cities in the early aughts; we have yet to use weird contraptions to ]]> With its brown and white walls, and sparse décor, CoCopelli Chocolatier is tidy, but it feels a little one-dimensional, common. Only when I talk to the owner, Lauren Roybal, does it open up, revealing hidden chambers like a set of matryoshka dolls.]]> Food is a widespread cultural obsession concerned with a return to place, transforming the locavores’ demand for regionally derived ingredients into experimental, sociohistorical experiences on the plate.]]> The menu disclaims, “It’s not Portlandia, It’s just coffee,” but the crowd says otherwise. Betterday Coffee, a new joint by La Montañita Food Co-op, caters to Bhakti Chai bikers, health-concerned co-operants, coffee connoisseurs and cool kids—in short, the many Portlandia archetypes.]]> “Amavi is closed until further notice,” Megan Tucker, the restaurant’s petite, auburn-haired former executive chef, announces upon sitting down. We’re in a corner of the former Corazón space,]]> I’m sitting at the bar in Tomme, restaurateur Maria “Max” Renteria’s latest venture, eating the best goddamned burger I’ve had in a long time. It’s not the biggest, but it is the best.Rent]]> My dad is a fount of bad jokes. In general, his jokes fall into three categories: painful puns, dirty jokes and humor at our family’s expense.]]> Baking Sno Balls recently, I realized that I’m secretly a little bit like Weird Al Yankovic-meets-adult filmmaker. That’s right: My guilty pleasure is corny recreations of less-than-stellar “cla]]> Americans can’t just wake up on any random day of the year and resolve to do things a little differently. But the ritual of using birthdays and the new year to effect change in our lives appears to be locked in the pomp and circumstance of being a curious consumer creature in the cornucopia of Western culture.]]> Although I’m a regular drinker, I try hard not to drink in excess. Sometimes I fail. And the night before my dinner date with friends at Casa Chimayó, I failed spectacularly.]]> ]]> Legend has it that Simeon Turley’s mill, in Arroyo Hondo near Taos, did great business in the 1840s selling a wheat-based whiskey to travelers, soldiers and wandering mountain men. ]]>