Bravo, Hotel Don Fernando's, and Ogelvies

Spirited Bar-Food Bargains Continue

January 16, 2007

The Pesky Tightwads, Steve and Donna, slipped and slid over the holiday snows at dinnertime in the past weeks, and discovered three more variations on budget bar food in Taos’s rich ecology of restaurants. In this dispatch, we’ll explore Dollar Dining at ¡Bravo! Fine Wine, Food and Spirits, the Hotel Don Fernando’s Bar, and the newly-smoke-free Ogelvies.

Located on the east side of Paseo del Pueblo Sur beside Sonic and across from People’s Bank, Bravo combines a bar and full-service liquor store, with sections of New Mexico wines and organic wines, and seating for about 90 diners at tables and bar stools. Bravo carries 260 beers, including scads of microbrews, and is the premier wine source in Taos, offering weekly wine-tasting classes. You can buy a bottle (or two or three) for dinner at the retail price and they charge no corkage fees for serving it to you. A special white and a special red of the day are only $4.50 a glass.

Taos ambiance radiates from Allen Polt’s big portraits of familiar locals lining the upper walls around half of the room, including the much-admired painting of R.C. Gorman that appeared on Tempo’s cover when Gorman died. Polt and Bravo co-owner, Joann Carolla, who are sweethearts, hatched the idea two years ago to commission the portraits for Bravo’s walls. Among them, I happened to recognize painters Ed Sandoval and Walt Gonsky (who was a college and Army buddy of Polt’s), Rushon Perera of the Monte Sagrado bar, real estate guy Ed Devlin, booksellers Art Bachrach and wife Susan, and Bravo chef/co-owner Leonel Garnier.

Garnier, from Paris, was chef at Ritz-Carleton and Hyatt resort hotels where he met the Swiss chef René Mettler. Mettler was looking for a place to open a restaurant, and Garnier lured him to Taos, where Mettler opened the Ranchos Trading Post in 1993. Garnier and Carolla opened Bravo a year later.

We’ve eaten at Bravo dozens of times and we can put together endless combinations of appetizers, soups, salads, and entrees that cost less than $25 for two. Appetizers include the Chicken Quesadilla ($6.95), with mesquite-grilled chicken chopped fine and mixed with onions, tomato, mushrooms, and red bell peppers. On a big flour tortilla, folded in half, the filling is an inch thick in the middle. I can never finish one.

Another house specialty is Leonel’s crinkle-cut, fresh-grilled potato chips, served with a sauce containing horseradish, sour cream, green onion, and fresh herbs. I had a “small� order of Bravo’s signature sweet-potato fries that was still a large portion. Britney Maestas, 15, our friend from Albuquerque, had tomato-rice soup with chunks of veggies, a nice blend of spices, and rice cooked just right. Donna had the mild-flavored Calamari ($7.25) that was lightly breaded and tender, not greasy or rubbery.

There are also New Zealand Mussels Marinara and Baby Crab Cake (both $5.95), and Escargot Provencal (six Burgundy snails), four-shrimp cocktail, and four pork egg rolls (all $6.95).

Side orders available all day ($3-$4) include rice pilaf, garlic spinach, green beans, garlic herbed mashed potatoes, and fresh fruit salad. Delectable entrées you might split, and stay under budget, include lobster bisque, tilapia fish and chips, and the blue-cheese buffalo burger.

Our server was Kelly Smithies, with the burr-cut hair, who’s been at Bravo for four years, one of several superbly professional servers including Maria Martinez, Teddy Jacquez, manager Tara Chisum, and the playful Juliet Hemmit.

Hotel Don Fernando. Sometimes in Taos, people get stuck in a time warp. I know, it’s extremely rare. You fire up the wheels and head downtown, saying, “Hey! Let’s hit the Holiday Inn for drinks and dinner. There’ll be a game on, too!�

It’s only been three years since the Holiday Inn became Hotel Don Fernando de Taos, so you may be a day late but you won’t be a dollar short, because the Pesky Tightwads have discovered excellent food for the buck at Don Fernando’s bar.

In fact, three of us had a nice dinner each, and we could have thrown in two glasses of wine and still come in at $25 total.

Don Fernando’s sits on the east side of Paseo del Pueblo Sur, just one door north of First Community Bank. It’s still owned by the same folks who also own the Garrett’s Desert Inn in their home town, Santa Fe.

We pulled into Don Fernando’s on a Wednesday night. The bar is an extension of the big, open lobby area. Since Britney is under 21, we asked if we could sit at one of the bar tables outside the barrier defining the bar proper, and bartender Slay cheerfully agreed.

We pondered a flashback ourselves: Donna noted that for years, when it was Holiday Inn, their brochure picturing bar diners featured Donna and her ex-husband. I just love that sense of history.

The front desk in the lobby and a portal element in the bar feature large-scale carved wood. The back wall to the east is painted a rich dark red, which helps separate the bar space from the lobby and makes the art pop.

The bar menu featured extremely modest prices, and when the food came we felt we’d hit the jackpot. Donna ordered a grilled chicken sandwich with O-rings (or fries) for $4.95. She found it delicious, with chunks of roasted garlic and fresh tomatoes. Britney had the grilled chicken Caesar for $3.95. She liked the proportions of tender chicken, crispy croutons, finely-shredded cheese, and Romaine in small pieces. I liked the looks of the vegetarian flat-bread pizza (they also had a chipotle-chicken version), but I asked if they’d throw on some crumbled hamburger. They did and I loved it. It came with an abstract dark balsamic drizzle, which went very well with the fontina cheese, calamata olives, onions, tomato chunks, and hamburger. The crust was tender and light.

As luck would have it, one of my former English 102 students was there, too. Anita Bringas was the perfect Don Fernando’s informant, because she works next door at the First Community Bank, used to manage a restaurant in L.A., and has eaten everything on the bar menu several times. She and her friend Antonia verified that other dishes on the menu were as tasty and well-prepared as ours. They had the Loaded Nachos ($3.45), with crunchy tortilla chips, and guacamole with big chunks of fresh avocado. They were filled up by half of it. For $3.45!

Anita and her mom are native Taoseñas who have returned from years of living elsewhere. Anita used the same words in lauding several bar dishes: “not heavy or greasy� and “light and well-seasoned.� Anita’s biggest secret of Don Fernando’s is this: “I’m a red-chile snob, because my great-grandmother handmade the best red chile I’ve ever eaten. But the red chile here is second only to hers. It’s thick chile caribe and near-perfect. They serve it at the lunch buffet, too.�

The chef responsible for these recipes is Craig Sharp. The sous-chef who cooked for us is Randy Herrera. It’s quite a feat to serve food this good for prices this low. Four Tightwad Stars to Don Fernando’s!

Ogelvies has one of the sweetest spots in Taos, overlooking the Plaza from the east side. Tables line a long balcony from which you can watch tourists, teens, and bikers cruise the historic square. On a recent Friday night, I popped in solo and found Sydney Westan singing his own country-folk tunes to an appreciative bar audience. The burly, mellow Westan tends bar at Ogelvies when he’s not singin’. I really liked one song about coming home to an appreciative wife and kids.

On Jan. 1, Ogelvies joined the Alley Cantina in going smokeless, and according to Assistant Manager Edgar Alonzo, they’re aiming the place at locals—single or with families—rather than at visitors, who were targeted by the former management. The restaurant has been there since 1980, surviving one fire.

Ogelvies appetizers are as affordable as Don Fernando’s during Happy Hour, 5 to 7 p.m., when they’re half-price, which makes the fried zucchini fingers—so light they almost seemed like mild, sweet fish—only $4.25. The buffalo wings (8 pieces, $3.75) were big and meaty, tender, steamin’ hot, and mildly spicy. I noticed too late that I could have gotten an appetizer platter of wings, zuke fingers, and potato skins for only $4.25, which could also buy me a Quesadilla con Pollo.

All New Mexican entreés, pasta, and sandwiches are between $7.50 and $11.50. One you don’t see often in Taos is the chicken in a fine dark mole sauce.

There’s a recipe and plaque on the wall from Bon Appetit magazine, recognizing the Ogelvies green chile stew, and another from the 2001 La Cocinita, giving the Critic’s Choice best burger award to Ogelvies. I think the burgers at Ogelvies, Shadows, Bravo, and Alley Cantina are so close that only quirks of personal taste separate them.