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#131 | Breakfast of Champions 

“[W]hat if my love language / is granola?” asks Tina Cane in her sort-of love poem “Breakfast of Champions.” Ours isn’t, though we consider granola with yogurt and honey and fresh fruit a fine breakfast, even a wise one, especially if the granola is homemade or small batch. But we’ve reflected, in concert with other longtime defenders of the foodstuff, on granola’s bad rap, linguistically speaking: To be granola is to be crunchy, i.e., there might be some earth caught between your toes. You might smell more like a human than a dryer sheet; perhaps you’re proud of the age of your Birkenstocks. Or at least that’s what it meant before the TikTok granola girl trend turned it into a wear-it-proud lifestyle brand. According to the new granola ethos, granola kids are still liberal, open-minded, and eco-conscious—but there’s now a “granola girl aesthetic” and at least one influencer who identifies as a granola queen.

“Words matter,” writes Abra Berens in Grist (a cookbook whose very title strives for a sort of linguistic take-back), “maybe least of all on menus, but even there they represent our culture and how we choose to showcase it.” 

If a cookbook can be granola, Grist is. It’s an inventory of ways to cook legumes and grains, with an emphasis on the underloved (think lima beans and millet). In her preface to a recipe for corn porridge, Berens cites a Jim Harrison essay on “the semantics between polenta and cornmeal mush.” Topping her list of menu pet peeves is the use of French or Italian to make a dish sound sophisticated. It strikes us as doubly ironic to elevate corn mush by dubbing it polenta, given that corn is indigenous to the Americas and the original Italian polenta was made with other grains. But, reporting from her own menu life, Berens concedes that feedback once prompted her to change “Turkey Neck Sauce over Cornmeal Mush” to “Turkey Collar and Tomato Sauce over Corn Porridge.” 

Of course, anyone would prefer to eat collar over neck, but has mush ever meant anything other than mush? Mushy is soft, and softness, whether literal or figurative, is something our culture celebrates more often at the spa than at the table. Yet, as we’ve noted before, there’s something of a mush revival afoot. There are some menus, like that at The El Roi Cafe, that offer blue corn mush, plain and simple. Others, like the Juniper Coffee + Eatery’s in Farmington, go with “bowl.” Itality, like Es Que Market, opts for atole for their beautiful—and satisfying—version. Using Spanish on a menu in New Mexico is hardly equal to using French in LA—still, we’d love to see blue corn mush appear by its humblest name if and when the dish makes it on the menu at the likes of Mesa Provisions or Campo. Let us know when mush starts making the TikTok rounds. 

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Entrances & Exits

Rincón de Mesilla, which opened in 2021, has announced that June 30 will be their last day of operation. This is sad news for the many who have found community in what we’re told has become a cultural haven for Las Cruces. The owners promise that their last two months of service will be as international as ever, with area chefs collaborating to add Spanish, Middle Eastern, Thai, Italian, and South American offerings to their Cuban- and Mexican-leaning menu.  

Last year our sister mag detailed Erin Wade’s plans to remake her businesses and start a beer hall in West Downtown Albuquerque, and some of those plans have already come to pass: Vinaigrette is now where Modern General used to be, the parking lot has been transformed into an enclosed patio, and a food trailer has been spied in the vicinity. But instead of construction at Vinaigrette’s old spot, there’s now an “available” sign in the window, and word on the street is that there will be no Schweinhund (at least not in that location).

Wild Leaven Bakery’s Santa Fe and Taos locations reopened Wednesday after a spring break. They’ve got sweets and savories and are also looking for a few new team members. 

SUCHNESS, the child of Kevin and Meg Sousa, is moving into 112 Camino de la Placita in downtown Taos. This means that instead of periodic pop-ups, they’ll be doing dinner five nights a week. And yes, spirit-free cocktails (along with wine and beer) will be on offer.

Occasions

Today is the first Taos Farmers Market of the season. Tomorrow is Seeds & Starts Day at the Rail Yards Market of Albuquerque. And Tuesday will be the second Tuesday market of the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market’s summer season (which stretches all the way into December). 

Tomorrow is also Mother’s Day, and if you’re just now realizing that, you’re likely too late for fancy reservations, but maybe you can throw together a meal with asparagus, snap peas, local beans and meats, and/or whatever else you find at the market.  

In response to our “Paris, Taco” edition, readers reminded us that Rudy's Real Texas Bar-B-Q does breakfast tacos, and that there are iterations at Palacio Restaurant and Tune-Up Café in Santa Fe. (The breakfast taco, as the Homesick Texan says in prelude to their recipe, is traditionally served on a flour tortilla, sans shredded lettuce and other accoutrements typical to the New Mexican taco.) Also in the City Different we discovered that the Turquoise Trailer at El Rey Court offers them. A bot on Quora reports a few places serving them in Las Cruces, but we don’t trust it. So that makes ABQ’s Manaña Taco one of few but not, as we hastily hypothesized, the only spot serving the Texas spin on the breakfast burrito, which some writers claim is itself actually a taco . . .    

If you’re looking for a way to pass your afternoon, there’s a chance that space may still be available in Chef Fernando Ruiz’s ceviche cooking class at The Kitchen Table Santa Fe. (In related news, Ruiz’s new restaurant, Escondido, has announced a grand opening of July 1, along with a tiered membership program that, unlike most internet fundraisers, actually comes with some perks—check their website for details.)  

New Mexico Cocktail Week kicks off with Taco Wars on May 31 and closes with the inaugural Burrito Smackdown on June 8. At press time there were still tickets for sale for the latter but only waitlist space for the former. 

It’s definitely too late to sign up for the croissant class happening this morning at Three Sisters Kitchen, but the beloved ABQ nonprofit is also offering a broth workshop by the name of Chicken Noodle Soup on May 18. (Sadly, the chinese dumpling class has already sold out.) 

Kick off your summer with Little Bear Coffee’s Campout at Kitfox, the high-desert glampsite just outside Santa Fe. With a fresh, locally sourced camp dinner by Dig and Serve and the next day’s breakfast courtesy of the aforementioned Mañana Taco—with coffee from Little Bear, of course—this is sure to be a gourmet slumber party under the stars. May 18–19, and spaces are limited!

Is champurrado corn mush? That depends on the maker, but whether thin or thick, silky or chewy, it is, in essence, an atole. You can find an iced version on the spring and summer menu at Eldora Chocolate, which has racked up quite a few awards for their bars. 

Speaking of awards, Stargazer Kombucha’s Assam and Cota kombuchas both won 2024 Good Food Awards, which means that in addition to tasting wonderful, they had to meet all kinds of sustainability criteria.  

As for granola, we’re partial to Three Sisters Kitchen’s, fond of The Grove’s, regretful that we didn’t sample Manolla Café’s when they were still around, and waiting for Taos Bakes to add a gingersnap pecan version to match one of our favorite of their bars. What're your favorites?

Distillations

“While we may never know if aliens crashed in Roswell or who cut the foot off the statue of Oñate, some questions can be answered through diligent research. Is there good pizza in Rio Rancho? Rest assured, the truth is out there.” Clarke Condé has close encounters with New York in “Rio Rancho Pizza Prowl.” 

“To understand the cultural place blue corn mush holds in the American Southwest is to understand the movement of peoples and seeds across space and time,” writes Cassidy Tawse-Garcia in “Love in a Cup: A Story of Blue Corn and Place.” Bonus: a recipe from South Valley farmer Lorenzo Candelaria.

Got a tip? Wish we knew about your favorite bakery/brewery/hole-in-the-wall? Give us a shout!

Mission

The Bite satisfies a hunger for provocative, artful, community-minded, diverse stories about the raw, the cooked, the distilled & the fermented. We strive for inclusion and a wide range of perspectives in our coverage of the New Mexico food and drink industry, sparking readers to veer out of their comfort zones and into the open territory of the region’s culinary landscape.

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