Here Comes the Neighborhood

I found myself entering a building on Shelby Street that I’d somehow never entered before in my life. To be fair, the front door, as it were, of the El Centro building, which now houses new café El Barrio (102 E Water St., (505) 303-1970), is technically on Water Street. But if you trek down a narrow breezeway beside the Verdes Foundation cannabis dispensary, just past a stand run by Churro Bar owner Gerardo Garcia, you’ll find the new spot. Once inside, you’ll most likely find owner Neema Sadeghi, former owner of Milad Persian Bistro, pouring espresso, assembling sandwiches and salads and attempting to resurrect the type of community hangout spot that was waning even before COVID-19 came along. With a strong variety of caffeine and quickie lunch items, he might just do it, too.

“After I closed Milad, I ended up working at Santacafé, where I still manage and wait tables some nights, and my wife was pregnant at the time, so I didn’t really want to open up another restaurant,” Sadeghi tells SFR. “So I was in this kind of limbo, and I got to spend more time with my family, which was great, but the coffee shop kind of presented itself to me.”

Some background: Sadeghi opened Milad Persian Bistro on Canyon Road circa 2016 with recipes he learned from his grandmother. The child of Iranian immigrants, he grew up in Washington, DC, and spent time in Los Angeles, El Paso—where he met his wife, Angie Urrutia—and even Spain, but after years spent visiting his mother, who moved to Santa Fe roughly 15 years ago, something about the weather pulled him here. After three-ish years on Canyon Road, Sadeghi moved Milad to the Solana Center, where it remained popular, Even so, he faced the brunt of those early pandemic lockdowns, and Sadeghi ultimately made the difficult choice to shutter the business. But what’s that saying about something having to crumble to make room for better things?

Sadeghi lured me and a friend to his new business with the promise of fresh churros from Garcia. Santa Fe isn’t hurting for coffee shops, and parking downtown is admittedly challenging, so this was a wise move on his part. Once there, however, his café's warm and inviting atmosphere felt immediately different from the industrial coldness of some local shops or the “buy coffee/get out,” vibe of others. Inside, a small number of two-tops lined the walls, while the aforementioned outdoor breezeway finds space for larger groups in a shaded patio setting.

Per Sadeghi’s recommendation, I first ordered an Americano ($3.50) while we perused the menu. He sources espressos and retail beans from Los Angles’ Unity Sourcing & Roasting, a company committed to finding single origin, fair trade beans from around the globe. Sadeghi’s personal favorite is dubbed Serious Black, a 50-50 blend of Guatemalan and Columbian beans, with which he made my Americano, and I can confidently say that, despite the relative simplicity of the drink, it was one of the more rich and nuanced cups of coffee I’ve sampled in recent memory. A cup of drip from New Mexico Piñon Coffee will set you back $3, and you can pick up half-pound bags of beans from Unity for $20—which sounds intense, but having taken home a little something from Ethiopia called Adado, it’s worth it.

Food-wise, we settled on a panino dubbed the Madison, a combination of cheddar, brie and asadero cheeses melted around green apple slices ($10). While we waited, Sadeghi brought us a serving of the salad of the day ($12), a spicy garbanzo number overflowing with raisins, carrots and cilantro and served with a lemon cumin dressing that was, frankly, wonderfully refreshing and teeming with flavor. When the sandwich arrived, the salad worked well with its contrasting tastes and textures, and though the apple slices were not what I’d call bursting with piquancy, their crisp and crunch against the gooey cheeses was as satisfying as it gets. Splitting the salad and sandwich worked well for two people, and besides—we still wanted those churros.

Outside, Garcia insisted on making us fresh mini churros from his new satellite outpost stand. If you haven’t been by Garcia’s Southside truck of the same name, you haven’t lived. At El Barrio, churros come three to an order for just $6, and you can have them filled with either chocolate or strawberry sauces or, my personal favorite, a dulce de leche. My companion raved about the strawberry filling as well, and the chocolate, while beyond delicious, was a mite heavy and could work better in colder months. Even so, thanks to Garcia’s expert abilities, we found our churros wonderfully crispy and hot; you won’t even mind if the sauce dribbles out a bit, because honestly, you need these things in your life.

According to Sadeghi, having separate businesses like Garcia’s is all part of the master plan. Ideally, he says, he’d like to offer other items from the street food milieu outside, such as tacos and, fingers crossed, elote. That’s still in the works, as are new menu items inside. Sadeghi’s wife hails from Juarez, for example, and they’ve been kicking around the idea of serving up more Mexican-inspired burritos. I know Santa Feans tend to think New Mexican and Mexican food are the same thing, but they’re really not, and for a former Southern Californian such as myself, the thought of getting something more faithful to the Mexican food I grew up with is thrilling.

Sadeghi, meanwhile, also offers private cooking services that make use of his Persian recipes, which you can request through his Instagram account (@elbarrionm), and the future of his brick and mortar joint could be a lot of things. For now, it almost feels like a little oasis for locals in the heart of the tourism district. Believe me, I loathe when people weaponize the term support, but this is precisely the kind of place we all need to support, and where we should try hanging out.

“I’ve worked in restaurants for a very long time,” Sadeghi says. “I feel lucky just to be around.”