After closing a year ago, a new baking company returns
More than a year after beloved Santa Fe Baking Co. & Cafe closed abruptly, a New Baking Co. is rising in its place, with familiar faces and menu
Alittle over a year ago, a restaurant closed in Santa Fe. This is not in itself news. Santa Fe is a restaurant hotspot and places come and go here sometimes weekly, often existing just long enough to get an article written about their grand opening. But the Santa Fe Baking Co. & Cafe held a special place in the hearts and stomachs of a dedicated community of Santa Feans. Nominally a cafe/diner, “Baking Company,” as its patrons called it, was much more to its devoted cadre of regulars — a locals-mostly spot, it was a coffee shop, gathering space, hangout and second home for the nearly 25 years of its existence until its unceremonious shuttering in March 2016.
There should be a word for the kind of heartbreak that comes from a beloved restaurant closing its doors, akin to the feeling when one’s favorite band breaks up or a TV show with a devoted fanbase is canceled. The closing of the Santa Fe Baking Co., due (as far as can be determined) to the decidedly unsexy nonpayment of taxes, left a hole in the middle of town around which its devoted regulars circled like lost souls. But now, unbelievably, their collective prayers and pleadings have been heard, and their beloved restaurant is being restored to them, possibly better than before.
The architect of this improbable resurrective miracle is actually a former employee of the old restaurant. Filiberto Rodriguez worked at Santa Fe Baking Co. for 17 years and knew the operation, the menu and the regulars inside and out. Now he, his wife, Norma Rodriguez, and Norma’s aunt and uncle, Maria and Mark Fehey, are bringing the place back to life — opening set for next month — as a fresh, new company under the slightly adjusted moniker of The New Baking Co.
And the resurrection isn’t just in partial name only. The owners intend to bring back the spirit, energy, feel and even the menu of the original restaurant that they loved. That includes bringing back much of the original staff, who scattered after it shuttered its doors but didn’t go far. The band is getting back together, and it’s going to play the same songs.
The original Santa Fe Baking Co. had a notoriously encyclopedic menu, and the Rodriguezes are dedicated to faithfully reconstructing it. Some of the excessive or underperforming items will be retired, but all your favorites, like the suite of omelets, the blue corn pancakes and the monstrous breakfast burritos, will all be back. They will be made by the same people who cooked them before, so they will taste pretty much the same, and will cost more or less the same as well.
Even the original baker is coming back, and The New Baking Co. will once again bake all its breads and pastries in-house, and they will be the very same breads and pastries, made by the same pair of hands as when the doors closed over a year ago. It will serve the same coffee. It will blend the same smoothies. Much of the kitchen equipment, including the range, remains from the old Santa Fe Baking Co.
The Rodriguezes did not initially set out to reconstruct the cafe. While the place held a special spot in both of their hearts, when a restaurant is gone, it is usually gone for good. Their plan was to open a new spot, probably serving American food, and they even looked at real estate in the same complex, the Coronado Center on Cordova Road, as the shell of the old Santa Fe Baking Co. But that space needed a lot of expensive renovation, whereas there was a perfectly good restaurant space just clamoring to be used a few doors down — a space that, to the Rodriguezes, had a deep emotional draw.
The space now looks a bit different. The old Santa Fe Baking Co. had been in operation for more than two decades, and the space was in need of a face-lift, though the odd multilevel floor and maze-like layout had a funky charm of its own. The Rodriguezes have done a full renovation job, replacing the floor, painting the walls and reconstructing the counter with a dinery gray-and-red color scheme. But regulars will recognize the brightly colored hanging artwork, signs and even the breakfast/ lunch menu rack from days of yore. Patrons will be encouraged to linger for hours with laptops, hold meetings and mingle as in days of yore. The closing of Santa Fe Baking Co. also left a certain sector of the community out in the cold: Santa Fe’s teens, who used to linger there in droves. The Rodriguezes want them to know they’re welcome back.
“I want the young people to come here,” Filiberto Rodriguez says. “There aren’t a lot of places for young people to go in the afternoons.”
“We want to make it a community, like it was,” adds Norma Rodriguez.
There are a few changes beyond the cosmetic. While the breakfast and lunch deal will be the same as before, the hours will be slightly extended from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week (and closing at 5 or 6 p.m. on Sundays) to allow for a dinner menu in the evenings that will include both some new American and New Mexican items, and the Rodriguezes hope to maybe apply for a beer and wine license eventually. Also, the Rodriquezes were given some of the soup recipes from another long-lost Santa Fe spot, Backstreet Bistro, so expect to see David Jacoby’s much-beloved Hungarian mushroom soup in The New Baking Co.’s soup rotation. The Rodriguezes, it seems, have enough miracle juice in them to bring back two restaurants.
The New Baking Co. will open its doors soon, at the beginning of June, but the Rodriguezes already are being inundated by former patrons who last year found themselves gazing with unhappy surprise at the shuttered windows of their former stomping ground. They poke their heads in the door with its construction sign up, sometimes jokingly placing their regular orders for hash browns and extra bacon.
“The food will taste the same,” Filiberto Rodriguez smiles. “These people don’t like change.”