French Restaurant L’Olivier set to close
Fine dining in downtown Santa Fe will lose the landscaped French enclave Restaurant L’Olivier by the end of August.
The COVID-19 restrictions on restaurant dining convinced owners Xavier Grenet and Nathalie Bonnard-Grenet to end the seven-year run of L’Olivier with dinner service Aug. 29, chef Xavier Grenet said.
The Grenets sent an e-blast Wednesday announcing the closure.
L’Olivier, at the corner of Galisteo and West Alameda streets, will be the second high-profile downtown Santa Fe restaurant to close permanently in the coronavirus pandemic after Eloisa at the Drury Plaza Hotel.
“This is a business decision,” Grenet said. “The fact is, the number doesn’t go the way we want. That’s it.”
After the governor limited restaurant dining to outdoor spaces July 1, business dropped for L’Olivier, which has 13 patio tables and lush landscaping curated by Bonnard-Grenet.
“When it was open 50 percent inside, it was OK,” Grenet said. “June was actually OK, not bad. I do have a patio. Sometimes it’s busy, sometimes it’s not. July-August is supposed to be the best. It’s not going to happen.”
Bonnard-Grenet also has been in her native France caring for her ailing father.
Grenet’s signature dish at L’Olivier is elk tenderloin, and the most popular is braised beef short ribs.
Grenet said diners were about an equal mix of locals and tourists. Fine French food in the land of green chile was not a guaranteed hit.
Still, he said, “we had really good years.”
With more than 30 years in the kitchen, Grenet first ventured into his own restaurant with L’Olivier in 2013. He had moved to Santa Fe in 2000 via San Francisco, New York City and his native France to work as executive chef at the now-closed French restaurant Ristra on Agua Fría Street.
Grenet’s only other visit to Santa Fe came in 1982. His father was scouting film locations in the Southwest and brought the family over for Christmas.
“I was young,” he recalled.
“There was big space. It was real fascinating. When you are a kid in France, there is a fascination about the U.S. and the West.”
Eighteen years later, Grenet had been in San Francisco for four years as executive chef at a Spanish fusion restaurant called Barcelona, which was shutting down. “I was looking for a job at the time,” Grenet said.
He saw a job listing for a French restaurant in Santa Fe and soon enough was executive chef at Ristra. He embraced Santa Fe.
“I like the quality of life here,” he said. “I like the weather. I like the four seasons.”
He met Nathalie at the restaurant in 2007. She is house manager of L’Olivier and developed a passion for wines, becoming a Level 1 sommelier in 2016.
Bonnard-Grenet is a native of Paris and earned a degree in landscape design. She worked in Florida before coming to Santa Fe.
Here she started “Santa Fe Accueil,” a French conversation group that evolved into a French cooking class. She also created Travel Heart, a touring company that focused on nature and the cultures of the Southwest.
Grenet grew up in Noisy-le-Grand, a suburb east of Paris.
What will the next chapter be? Grenet is not saying.
“I’m going to take a little break,” he said. “I have options. I know I cannot tell people what I will do now. I am open to anything.”