Eastern European flavors find home in former Clafoutis space
Dolina takes over former Clafoutis location, offering breakfast, lunch and bakery items with a little Eastern European flavor
We should all start learning a bit more about Eastern Europe. Not because of the “covfefe” in the news or the looming possibility of a second Cold War (slightly less cold, these days, by about an average of one or two degrees worldwide). No, we should all learn about Eastern Europe because words in Eastern European languages are very hard to pronounce without practice, but it helps enormously if you want to delve into the delicious world of Slovak pastry. This was not an issue in Santa Fe before, but now Santa Fe has a new breakfast spot called Dolina, featuring an ever-increasing suite of Eastern European (and Western European) baked goods.
Annamaria O’Brien, owner of Dolina, took over the building that formerly housed Clafoutis on Guadalupe Street in mid-May and started renovations. The new aesthetic is calming, even minimalist, without art on the walls (yet). Dolina had a soft opening on July 3, without fanfare.
“We sort of sneakishly opened the door, just to see,” O’Brien says.
Dolina, in Slovak, means “valley” — more a reference to a romantic motif found in Slovak songs and poems than a geologic formation.
“People gather in the valley, things grow in the valley,” O’Brien says. “A friend of mine came up with it in Slovakia, and I instantly connected with it. It’s where my friends and I would get into all kinds of trouble.”
O’Brien moved to the U.S. 16 years ago from Slovakia, where she grew up in the restaurant business.
“My parents had a restaurant in Slovakia. I grew up around food, around restaurants working for my dad. He just had a simple lunch and dinner place in Slovakia; a lot of meat, a lot of cured meats. I think that’s why I became a vegetarian, I ate my way through life through meats,” she says.
She first lived in Florida, but “it wasn’t my cup of tea,” she says. “I enjoyed it for a short period of time, but I loved the mountains, I love running on trails. I love winters and fall and all of that. I needed to be somewhere with four seasons, and someone told me about Santa Fe.”
O’Brien worked at Geronimo for about 10 years as a server, and eventually, she and her then-husband Murphy O’Brien opened Cafe Fina together. She then took three years off from the restaurant business to be with her kids, but she couldn’t ignore the call of the oven.
“I was patient and I just kept my eyes open, and then I heard about Clafoutis wanting to move. I came and approached them, and they were happy for me to take over their lease. … It was nice for me to take three years off [from] the restaurant business, but I was antsy to get my feet back into something I really loved,” O’Brien says.
The menu is farmhouse fresh and largely brunchy, including your basic eggs, bacon and hashbrowns, a breakfast burrito and a selection of omelets. There also are some distinctive brunch items that you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere in town, like baked eggs with garlic confit (served with toast) or a savory bread pudding, made with croissant dough and vegetables, the custard itself made of eggs, milk, thyme, and cream and cheese on top.
There are some more lunchy things, like cornmeal waffles with buttermilk fried chicken, salmon tartine (with cured salmon, creme fraiche, eggs and capers) and a British-inspired fried fish sandwich called One for David, named for a family friend (named David, obviously) who, O’Brien says, used to come over to her house with his family every time she made it at home.
The prices are affordable, ranging from $8 for the simple breakfast to $12 for the waffles and chicken.
“The concept is a simple brunch menu consisting of good, organic eggs, hash browns made in house; we use real butter, real maple syrup,” says O’Brien. “But really, the bakery is my love.”
The bakery also is where O’Brien (and her partner-in-crust, assistant Maureen McCarthy) is beginning to introduce some Eastern European touches to the menu. Along with a suite of croissants, buns, muffins and cakes, she offers some old country recipes, like a Slovak version of vanilla cream puffs, or a divine cake called tvarohovy struhany, consisting of two layers of cocoa-flavored grated pastry with a filling of a probiotic cream cheese, called tvarog, that makes its way into many Slovak pastries. The real charm to it is that it is both rich and light without being overly sweet — the perfect accompaniment to coffee.
“We’ll be doing some strudels with apples and browned poppy seeds, too,” O’Brien says. “I feel like Eastern European baked goods are more earthy. We’ll have strudels down the road.”
As the summer wanes and the days get colder, O’Brien will be adding Eastern European food to the menu, like goulash, cabbage and stews.
“I feel like a lot of what we eat [in Slovakia] is very fall-y,” O’Brien says.
Dolina is open seven days a week, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sundays. Brunch is happily served all day.