Amuse-bouche Arroyo Vino
ARROYO VINO RESTAURANT AND WINE SHOP
THE lights of Arroyo Vino Restaurant and Wine Shop shine like a beacon in the night, illuminating the long, dark road that threads through the gently rolling hills of the residential neighborhood of La Tierra. The shop and the restaurant share a simple spacious building in a commercial complex. The dining room, which can seat 60 without crowding, is boxlike, with no nooks or architectural features beyond a bar in the center of the room. Two large chalkboards listing daily specials and produce sourced from the property’s own two-acre garden and hoop houses dominate one of the grey-green walls; a disparate collection of artwork — a huge rooster, modernist Navajo rug, minimalist raven, and an abstract Dan Namingha landscape — decorate the others. It’s a room designed to be comfortable without competing for attention with the food and wine emerging from the kitchen, bar, and shop.
The service is equally efficient — friendly and well informed without being intrusive. We were greeted with a complimentary amuse-bouche when we were seated — a fine-dining tradition rarely seen in Santa Fe. On this night, it was a square of soft, sweet roasted squash from the restaurant’s kitchen garden, lightly napped with a black truffle-scented brown butter sauce. It was deceptively simple yet sensuous — an excellent introduction to recently arrived executive chef Allison Jenkins.
Her palate seems to tilt toward the Mediterranean Basin, with ingredients like ras el hanout, harissa, Calabrian chile, vadouvan curry, saffron, pomegranate, pistachios, and yogurt appearing in various I sections of the brief but wellrounded menu. Our fried calamari was a multicultural case in point. Served with a smear of peanut butter softened with miso paste and tahini alongside a honey-soy dipping sauce that was more savory than sweet, it was hard to imagine all the different parts in harmony. But the togarashi-spiced batter was light, the squid tender, and the nutsesame-soy combination pulled it all together.
We enjoyed the calamari so much that we ordered it again on another visit. This time, though, a heavier hand was at work — the togarashi was more prominent, deepening the batter’s color and raising the heat level; the dish was much saltier; and the squid was nearly overcooked. But the kitchen was prepping for a wine dinner, and we assumed that whoever was in charge of the fryer was somewhat distracted. Chef Jenkins has added pasta to the menu, where it is listed in a category of its own — one that would be considered a primi in Italy, coming between the appetizers and the meatier mains. Our waiter told us the chef had developed a love for pasta when she spent time training in kitchens in the Piedmont and Rome, so we decided to try one of the three offerings. The house-made cavatelli was light, tender, and beautifully formed; the sauce a savory blend of mushrooms, finely slivered kale from the garden, toasted hazelnuts, and shavings of Parmesan. Each bite was simultaneously warm, soft, creamy, and crunchy — a swirl of sensations.
The Moroccan Spiced Mary’s Chicken (a freerange bird popular in Santa Fe natural food markets) showed the same light touch and sure hand with spices. The half chicken was pressed to create a crisp exterior and firm interior without a hint of dryness, then surrounded by a mélange of farro and cauliflower, and enriched with olives and almonds. Warmed with chile-based harissa, a key component of North African cuisines, and cooled with a minty yogurt sauce, all the ingredients and textures were in balance with one another, with no one flavor dominating the dish.
A crisp fillet of line-caught New Zealand swordfish, an off-menu special, was served atop a shallow lake of creamy mashed potatoes, topped with very fresh green beans and garnished with soft rounds of melting garlic and shallots. A scattering of pine nuts added the requisite crunch to the dish; a simple buttery sauce tied it all together. It was, my music-loving companion sighed, a perfectly conceived symphony of flavors and textures, with not an off-note on the plate.
As the name would suggest, wine is as important to the Arroyo Vino experience as the food, with 13 wines and five beers by the glass available. My Pewsey Vale, Eden Valley Riesling played beautifully with the spicy calamari and chicken; my companion’s Bavik Super Pilsner, a light Belgian-style ale recommended by our waiter, balanced the spice in the starter and cut through the butter in his main course.
Wine choices are expanded by daily sommelier selections and an extensive bottle list, at this time ranging in price from $36 (for a Napa Valley Chardonnay) to $190 for a highly rated 2011 vintage Château Lynch-Bages Pauillac. Most bottles fall in the $40-$80 range. You can also choose a bottle from the shelves of the unusually well-stocked wine shop adjacent to the dining room. Pay the retail price and a $30 surcharge and it will be delivered to your table. The prices may be a little above average for Santa Fe, a knowledgeable friend advises, but so is the eclectic selection.
A classic dark chocolate pot de crème enhanced with brandy and topped with a generous piping of espresso whipped cream brought the evening to a perfect finish, the lacy cocoa-nib tuille tucked into the side of the bowl reinforcing the chocolate hit and adding some gluten-free crunch. Excellent espresso and a cortado put it all to rest and sent us, gently sated, back into the dark night.
A return visit for happy hour was a completely different, if equally satisfying, experience. Happy hour selections include a number of the same starter choices — fried calamari, grilled flatbread, cheese and charcuterie plates — as those on the dinner menu. Marinated olives, spiced marcona almonds, and a house-made chicken liver pâté expanded the alcoholfriendly choices of nibbles. The pâté, paired with a grainy mustard, very thin toasted bread rounds, and tangy cornichons, was as smooth and savory as we could wish; we left not a smear on the plate. On this night the cheese plate featured a triple blue Wisconsin, a soft, ripe Italian taleggio, and a peppercorn-crusted Bellwether Farms sheep and cow blend. Candied walnuts, house-made peach compote, a square of honeycomb, and more of those crispy breads rounded out the plate.
Arroyo Vino’s happy hour bargains are not in the food prices but in the featured glass of wine, featured cocktail, and well drinks ($7) and beer ($3). But we were more intrigued by the cocktail menu. One of the signature drinks, the Prefecture #1, was a well-built blend of Calvados, Colkegan (a locally distilled singlemalt whiskey), Amaro Nonino, and nutty rancio. As the sky darkened and the wind hurled leaves against the windows, the drink seemed a seasonally appropriate shield against the coming storm.
Craving a last taste of summer, we also ordered an off-menu Aperol Spritz, a brilliantly red-orange Northern Italian aperitif now wildly popular in the United States. The bar’s version adds a hit of Cappelletti Vino Aperitivo Americano Rossi to the classic combination of Aperol, bubbly prosecco or Champagne, and a touch of soda, deepening the drink’s herby, bittersweet burnt-orange flavor.
We capped the night with the gluten-free almondolive oil polenta cake topped with a very delicate lavender ice cream. The cake had a lovely crumb but would have benefited from a gentle warming, while a luxurious vanilla ice cream scoop with crushed hazelnut praline and a caramel thread was a total winner. Sent on our way with complimentary house-made caramels tucked into our cheeks, we felt like happy squirrels, fortified to survive the coming cold.