Lulu's, Maverick's, Michelle's

May 22, 2008

Lula’s—Outfront Venture from Outback

Maverick County Reincarnates (Again!)in Seco

Sip Your Java in Michelle’s Living Room

Pizaño’s Thin-Crust Pizza, New Entrées

Lula’s. Changing with the times, Sandy Tolbert, co-founder of Taos Pizza Outback, has opened a Nouvelle Deli up front on Paseo Sur across from Randall Lumber in the old Pizza Emergency building. Nouvelle Deli is a category I just made up. Lula’s fits into it because it’s painted sunny yellow inside, has tall chrome and glass tables, the menu is written in colored chalk, including purple, and one of the sandwiches is “The Mantra.�

Sandy Tolbert says, “Outback was a reflection of the end of that hippie era when we opened it in 1990. Lula’s is a recognition that I’ve changed, the town has changed, my market has changed.�

Tolbert, head chef Tracy Manning, and manager Whitney Lake opened Lula’s in late January. There’s no pizza on the menu. Don’t ask. They roast their turkey, beef, and pork in-house and make soups du jour from scratch daily. There are salads including all the ingredients Nouvelle implies, like beets, walnuts, bleu cheese, olives, Tucumcari feta cheese, hummus, baba ganouj, and thinly-sliced meats. Small salads are $5 to $7, and large are from $6.50 to $9.

The deli sandwiches are named Papa Hemingway, Southwest Spin, the Mantra, and the Wellington, with four other standards. The basic sandwich plus a drink means a lunch cost of 10 to 12 bucks, and time will tell if that goes over. But Lula’s offers a way to cut the costs if you aren’t so hungry: they offer basic sandwiches with one meat for $5 (half for $4) and one cheese for $4 (half for $3). My Southwest Spin sandwich didn’t squish out, didn’t dissolve the Sage House bread, and was about the right size and tasty.

Evenings after 4 p.m., Lula’s serves Blue Plate specials that Tolbert describes as “country comfort cooking.� They’re $11.50 with one side and $13.00 with two. Choices “may include� meat loaf, chicken paprika, pot roast, overstuffed portobellos, veggie lasagna, beef stew with cornbread, BBQ pulled pork, and chicken pot pie. Sides may include potatoes au gratin, twice-baked potatoes, Iowa Pie (corn and ham), baked beans, green beans with dill pesto, and small salads. These specials give a hint of Tolbert’s Oklahoma small-town origins. Lula doesn’t work here; the place is named after Sandy’s maternal grandmother, Lulabelle.

Maverick County Food Co. Just Won’t Die! Reincarnates in Seco! Sheila Guzman opened Gypsy 360 in Arroyo Seco in summer 2002 in Seco Plaza, behind what is now the Doug West Gallery on the east side of the highway. After a good three-and-a-half-year run, Boing! she sold it in January 2006. The new owners lasted a year and a half and Boing! closed in summer 2007. You with me? Meanwhile, in January of 2007, Sheila and Ruth Guzman opened a new place, Maverick County, Boing! at the Overland Ranch. They closed that in October, and when their old landlord at Seco, Andy Burns, invited them back, Boing! they opened The Maverick County Food Co. back in the old Gypsy 360 building this March. It’s Whack-A-Restaurant.

Sheila says the menu is “a combination of Gypsy and Maverick, with our ever-perfected burger and Asian, Panini, and Curry dishes.� There are hot and cold sandwiches and salads. She’s most militant about “there are no purchased products, frozen or canned, in our kitchen. We use 100% local, organic ingredients, including grass-fed NM beef and buffalo for our burgers. Ruth makes our pastries in-house.�
Regular hours are Tues.–Sat., 8:30 a.m. -4 p.m. The place seats 17 inside and another 40 outside at picnic and bistro tables. On Sundays, they’re available for private parties. Call Ruth and Sheila at 776-0900.

Michelle’s Living Room. Just as there is no Lula at Lula’s, there is no Michelle at Michelle’s Living Room and Cyber Café, the newest coffee place in town. The owner, locals Lea Perry and boyfriend Tony Herrera, thought it sounded homey and serene, which is what they designed their place to be. It occupies the southeast corner of Plaza de Colores, south of Shadows, facing Paseo del Pueblo Sur.

Michelle’s is the latest spin on coffee places, a big room dominated by huge overstuffed love-seats, couches, and chairs. Some face into the room and order counter, but the biggest face the east wall and its 52� TV. High speed wireless internet is free if you bring your own computer.

When I was there, Tony was running one of his favorite DVDs on the screen, “Planet Earth,� and it was so enthralling and mesmerizing that I sat down for a half hour. Tony says the series took nine years to make and comes in a box of seven DVDs that each hold three hour-long episodes of gorgeous cinematography. The piece I watched was shot above, inside, and under the water of a huge limestone cave system in the Yucatan: water running in green sluices underground, a million bats flying out with hawks cruising among them picking off snacks, divers floating in another world. There was ethereal music accompanying the video images, very serene. Tony says they’ll put on whatever people request, but it looks like the house images are an alternative to the sports, cartoons, and Bollywood of other coffee places.

The concrete floor is red, the walls are mustard. There are four booths and five tables in addition to the couches. Some of the tables have these tush-formed rotating stools that may get you in trouble. Adam Schallau’s amazing color photos of landscapes line the walls around the TV—check out the one of the Bisti Badlands.

Lea gets her coffees from Gaviña, run by three brothers and a sister, descendants of a Cuban plantation founder. Lea and Tony—uh,
Michelle’s—offers six varieties brewed daily: Breakfast Blend, Vanilla Nut, French Roast, “Highlander Grog,� a medium roast, and two decafs, Sumatra and “Mexican Grand Liquor,� a medium to dark roast. And of course espresso drinks made from any of them. They also offer breakfast burritos and panini sandwiches.

Michelle’s Living Room is open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The pesky diners dropped by Pizaño’s, at 23 Ski Valley Road (State Highway 150) just east of Bareiss Gallery, and enjoyed some slices of their thin-crust pizza. While the slices baked, we eased the tension with glasses of Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. The glasses held a full quarter of a bottle. The Chardonnay was Bonterra, the Fetzer family’s California organic, which is made adjacent to my wife Donna’s sister’s place in Ukiah. Both wines were excellent. Our cooling-out was aided by the ambiente at Pizaño’s: colorful walls painted lime, orange, and dark red, and tables stained with green washes and bordered by stained-glass chips put in a one-inch border with clear grout. The art on the walls could use some curating, as it goes downward from a nice Bill Rane painting to some other ones somebody must have had lying around.

We liked the crisp bottom of the thin crust, and we liked the meats. Donna had sausage and mushroom and green chile, and I had pepperoni, hamburger, green chile, green pepper, and black olives. The first piece I got was so good I ordered another, hoping it would have more topping density than the first. And it did, and it was bigger too. So that worked, and we departed mellow and satisfied. Two glasses of wine, a good-sized small salad, and three slices with extra toppings cost us $34.

Pizaño’s advertises its origins as “Two Guys from Utica, N.Y.� They have many appetizers, “Tunnel� sandwiches, deli sandwiches, Italian entrées, and homemade desserts. They also have twelve specialty pizzas, small from $17 to $24 and large from $21 to $28, with exotic ingredients like walnuts, goat cheese, chipotle pepper, artichoke hearts, smoked salmon, pesto, pineapple, chicken and Alfredo sauce—if you’re a Nouvelle pizza fan.

sfox@nets.com