FOOD WITH A VIEW
Museum Hill Cafe serves basic but tasty menu, with stupendous scenery
Some santafesinos might not count Museum Hill, home to two state museums and a nonprofit one, as a regular stop on their itineraries. But at the moment, there are two good reasons to head up there. One is the wonderfully whimsical exhibit of ornamental folk carpentry, misleadingly titled “Tramp Art,” at the Museum of International Folk Art. The other, more incidentally, is lunch at the nearby Museum Hill Cafe, an airy and informal eatery with stupendous views.
We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly at both venues recently and can report that the cafe may not be a destination in itself but should definitely be on your list should lunchtime find you on the city’s upper east side.
The menu is spare, ranging from soups and salad to a few sandwich choices and a list of specialities, mostly updated versions of New Mexico standards, including tacos and enchiladas. The enchiladas at Museum Hill Cafe, for example, are the “suiza” variety, with chicken and cheese and smothered in green tomatillo sauce. Tacos are available with shrimp or salmon, and the flautas are made with smoked duck.
My guest went for the shrimp tacos ($14.95), which were jazzed up with a Chinese chile-and-orange marinade for the shrimp. They were good: faintly sweet, faintly citrusy and quite spicy. The medium shrimp were nicely grilled, the small corn tortillas fresh and soft, and shavings of Napa cabbage and a dish of pico de gallo finished out the plate. He approved.
The sandwich selection at Museum Hill is small, too, but it covers the bases: a patty melt, a tuna melt or a burger, plus a classic Reuben and that other classic, grilled turkey. Vegetarians will have to content themselves with a caprese — mozzarella, sliced tomatoes and a basil pesto on ciabatta.
I was in the mood for meat and opted for the open-face steak sandwich (also $14.95). It, too, was good: a just-right serving of freshly grilled steak on sourdough slathered with a Dijon mustard and-mayo combination that had a nice bite. Riding atop: fresh tomato slices garnished just a hint of tangy feta cheese vinaigrette.
One quibble: The steak, not the tenderest cut, would have benefited from being sliced up in the kitchen. (To be fair, the sandwich arrived with a serrated steak knife, so the task was easy.)
Museum Hill’s dessert menu similarly was small and classic. Chocolate, of course, in the form of mousse, a daily fruit cobbler variation, a couple of pies, all locally made according to the waitress.
Banana cream pie ($5.95) was featured the day we visited. Who could resist? It was every decadent thing you might wish for: piles of whipped cream, a custard filling redolent with ripe banana slices, which had been laced with caramel. Two of us could not quite finish the serving.
The service was attentive despite what seemed like a crowd. The highceilinged dining room was a little noisy as a result, but the nearly 360-degree view out over the city and the mountains more than made up for that annoyance.
Now senior citizens, we visited on a Wednesday, when admission to the museums is free for seniors and no doubt explained the crowd. A note to the wise: All New Mexico residents are admitted free to the museums, too, on the first Sunday of every month.