Amuse-bouche Alicia’s Tortilleria
ALICIA’S TORTILLERIA
Santa Fe has been a culinary destination for a couple of decades, known for its high-end restaurants and the classic New Mexican joints that are usually booked to the gills with locals and tourists alike. To my mind, though, one of the best things about our city is its hidden gems, secret neighborhood places without all the bells and whistles or claim to James Beard Foundation fame. These are the unassuming places that blow you away with outstanding, often simple food eaten at a picnic table or hunched over the trunk of your car, wiping salsa off your lips with a flimsy paper napkin — no white tablecloth or sommelier in sight.
With Meow Wolf, one of the city’s biggest attractions, now just around the corner, Alicia’s Tortilleria is probably less of a neighborhood secret than it used to be. Smack in the center of an otherwise-unobtrusive eraser-pink cinderblock building, it’s a small, dual-sided shop (order through the door on the left, pick up food or eat on-site through the door on the right) that’s rarely swarmed, though it’s also seemingly never empty, even early on a Saturday morning.
Unless you arrive with a particular hankering, Alicia’s extensive menu — handwritten in colorful ink on poster board that’s tacked to the buttery-yellow walls — may make the decision-making process difficult. Do you want tacos? You have at least 10 choices. A burrito? Pick from more than a dozen. Craving quesadillas, enchiladas, fajitas, flautas, tortas, tostadas, chiles rellenos, or menudo? Alicia’s has you covered, and then some. You can also lug home a big bag of corn tortillas — arguably the best in town — for $1.25 a pound.
The coctel de camaron is among the finest I’ve had, a 20-ounce cup chock-full of healthy-sized plump pink shrimp, cool and firm in a sweet tomato sea, the surface littered with flotsam of perfectly ripe avocado and a tangle of cilantro. Finely chopped celery and thin discs of carrot create some delightful contrasting crunch. The whole affair is pleasantly mild but wildly addictive when it’s zhushed up with a few squeezes of fresh lime juice and the contents of a small plastic cup of hot sauce.
In general, the chile relleno burrito usually strikes me as a bona-fide gut bomb, but Alicia’s minimizes the impact by keeping the size manageable — it fits comfortably in a hungry diner’s hand — and keeping the mellow chile’s batter thin but flavorful and appropriately eggy. The relleno is enveloped by a mantle of refritos, making the overall texture gentle and soft,