Santacafe, Santa Fe

If you are looking for mediocre food at a high price in a crowded noisy restaurant with an inflated reputation, Santacafe is the restaurant for you. My last incident there will be my last incident there. I reserved a specific table for a very special event four days early. Since three times previously other customers got the table I had reserved, I was promised this would not happen again. It did! We arrived early and were informed by the power hostess that again we would not get the table we requested. We left on a very busy Saturday night in tears never to return. I was loyal to an image that no longer exists. Santa Fe has so many wonderful restaurants that work hard to maintain their reputation. Sadly, Santacafe is no longer one of them. Save yourself aggrivation and disappointment and go to Luminaria or Ristra or my new favorite, Jinga.

We had a great time. It is May and we ate in the courtyard. Menu was great, I had fish with spring veggies my wife had stuffed chilie that was full of flavor. Fun part of the meal was wait staff, they were great. This is a place I would return for service and great meal in wonderful surroundings. By the way, go to the bathroom and look at the well, that is worth the trip.

I highly recommend the Santacafe restaurant. The service and wait staff was superb. The staff was on top of keeping the table clean as soon as you were finished with a plate and making sure you had something to drink. The food was absolutely excellent! It was perfectly cooked and still very warm once it arrived at the table. I would definately return to Santacafe for another excellent experience.

A ribeye steak, which is difficult to ruin, was eighty percent fat and sinew. There was no authentic New Mexican or Santa Fe food on the menu, but plenty of weird concoctions that one can now expect on menus all over the country. When one travels to Santa Fe and pays exorbitant prices for a meal, one expects to at least have a reminder on the table of where one actually is. Exotic seafood dishes, created by a whimsical chef who apparently is in competition with other chefs to see whose flight of fancy carries them farthest from Santa Fe, are distinctly out-of-place. Staff is more pretentious than accomodating, atmosphere is dull but for the extreme echoes of other diners, thanks to the design of the building, and food is middling at top prices in town. Good place to go if you just want to be seen amongst other people who have been duped by the hype; otherwise, the wise will go to Santa Fe's authentic restaurants. Santa Cafe: New York food at Le Cirque prices, for those who aren't fond of the real Santa Fe, and need their food flown in from thousands of miles away.

This restaurant was highly touted by locals. The atmosphere was average and we found the wait staff extremely pretentious. The food presentation was also overstated, which did not cover the lack of flavor. Overall, very over-priced and pompous. There will be no return visits from us.

Loved the calamari! It is the '10' on our scale of rating restaurants. No other restaurant (and we've traveled the world) has ever come up to a '7' in comparison. It's not the only reason we love this place - it's beautiful, light and friendly. Have enjoyed their non-calamari food as well...high-point on our annual trip from Tucson (and before that, San Francisco).