- So we'll be going to one of the most iconic restaurants
in Santa Fe, and we'll be meeting two guys
who started off as dishwashers
and are now executive chef and owner.
Let's go check out Coyote Cafe.
- Hola, Chef.
- What's up man?
- How are you?
- Good, good.
- Welcome.
This is Chef Eduardo Rodriguez.
- Welcome.
- Okay, I've heard amazing things about this place
and ton of history,
and what type of food are you guys doing here?
- [Quinn] This is what defined the restaurant,
you know, decades ago, its modern, Southwestern cuisine
and in the restaurant and in the Southwest we use chiles
for a flavor, not necessarily for heat
but lots of great flavor.
- So first one that we're gonna do is,
we're gonna make the corn cakes.
- [Eduardo] So we have the yellow cornmeal, AP flour.
- Oh, giving out the secrets right now.
(laughs)
- [Eduardo] So then, like we have corn too,
salt, sugar, too, making powder, barley milk.
- [Chef] For some tartness.
- [Eduardo] Exactly, yeah.
I spent half of my life in Mexico
and half of my life here, in Santa Fe.
- You grew up cooking?
- Yeah, I'm from Zacatecas so my family was like,
huge family, you know?
I was living with my mother, my grandma.
When I came here to Santa Fe, New Mexico,
I was like, came here for vacation, you know?
To be seeing my brother.
I was set to go to the school to do my architect.
- Oh, okay.
- But when I see the kitchen,
I saw everybody working on the lines, you know,
I think I'm in the wrong....wrong
- Yeah, yeah.
- So you know, the only position we have in the restaurant
is as washing dishes, you know what?
I want it.
Three months I was washing dishes and prepping.
Six months later, I was on the line.
I don't make buildings, but I make, like, amazing food.
- [Sheldon] The shrimp that's been marinated with
- [Eduardo] Chipotle Morita,
more smoke on the rest, it is sweeter.
Chipotle butter sauce too;
its a white wine, shallots, fresh thyme, black peppercorns.
This recipe's almost has like 30 years,
since this place opened.
- [Sheldon] So this dates back all the way to
when Mark Miller was taking, you know,
Southwestern cuisine and elevating it.
- [Eduardo] Yeah, exactly.
We have avocado, tomatoes,
chipotle butter sauce, micro cilantro.
- [Sheldon] Ode to the original.
- [Eduardo] Original chef, Mark Miller.
It's still on the menu.
- In New Mexico you see chile, enchiladas,
green or red, but we have different places.
I want Coyote Cafe to be a little bit different
from the rest of the restaurants.
We have lots of people here in town and they love
like game-y food, so I decide to bring this amazing quail.
As we're stuffing this with chorizo, cornbread, celery.
Yeah, we make it brown for a little bit.
- [Sheldon] Straight into the oven?
- [Eduardo] Straight into the oven.
People travel a lot,
people like tasting different foods, like why not?
Ancho chile demi-sauce,
one piece of quail in the middle, too.
And then we have this like, beautiful apple salad.
- [Sheldon] Pinot noir wine reduction, and this is it.
So next up is the elk.
- Yes sir.
- The elk has been marinating
in a lot of different things already.
- This is like a native Modelo beer, hoisin sauce,
fresh rosemary, garlic and shallots.
We marinate this for like six hours, cuts the game-y,
there's not a lot of fat on the elk,
so that's why I roll this in caul fat.
- [Sheldon] Its gonna add a lot of flavor it, keep it moist.
Elk is not very common but it's very common to the people
who live in Santa Fe, they go hunting for it, so.
- [Eduardo] Yeah so next you have to just bring this
potato nest to the fryer,
black garlic mashed potatoes,
sugar snap peas, bacon.
White truffle demi-sauce too,
we prepare all the veal stock and let it reduce
for maybe like two cases, a hundred pounds of bones.
This is a fava bean puree.
- And then one few places that is serving elk.
I heard there is some crazy onion rings
that we gotta taste too.
- Red chile onion rings and we use like, buttermilk, too,
flour, the cumin, red chile, cayenne.
We serve these red chile onion rings here.
- They can't get away from the red chile, ya?
- I really didn't know much about Santa Fe
but things that I've heard before, visiting here, chile,
breakfast burritos, and then this spot, Coyote Cafe.
One of the most important,
if not the most important restaurants in Santa Fe.
- Back when the restaurant opened in '87,
there was a lot of chefs coming up,
Jeremiah Tower and Bobby Flay and Mark Miller
and that generation of chefs that were trying to define
this type of cuisine, Coyote Cafe,
when you read through the menu you know where you're at
in the country, in the world,
you know what time frame you're living in.
- [Sheldon] Cornbread and chorizo stuffed quail.
First taste of Coyote Cafe.
- [Quinn] There you go.
- And that ancho chili of the demi
kind of just envelopes your mouth.
The cornbread stuffing is, I don't know,
I relate it to being around the holidays
so it's almost warming to you.
- [Quinn] So short stack of grilled corn cakes.
- Freaking delicious, it's almost like these fun little
vessels to put whatever you want on top of it.
Its so cool to see a restaurant that's serving elk.
- This was a dish that we had been doing for many years,
a perfect example of me asking Chef,
"How can we take something that we've been doing for so long,
and modernize it?"
You're taking a staple and something that is well-received
and respected but question it and say
"can it be done better?"
Probably our number one dish.
- I've never had elk before.
That is...people eat more elk out there.
It's delicious.
There's no gaminess whatsoever.
Nice and juicy, nice and moist.
I knew there was red chile in this restaurant
and here it is.
Crunchy, fried perfectly, I love that you can still have
something that can be so comforting like this.
How did you two come along together in this partnership?
- Yeah, I well Chef and I known each other over ten years.
We're both kind of younger cats on the scene
and when the executive chef position opened up,
it was really a natural choice for me,
I've got a handle on the front of it
and the business side of it
and Chef has a handle on the kitchen.
I've been here 19 years at Coyote Cafe,
it started early for me, washing dishes,
and then I was a bus boy one year, you know, 16, 17,
and slowly just step by step from busser to food runner
to waiter to bar back to bartender.
Next year I will have spent half my life in this restaurant.
- You got roots coming off of your shoes?
- Seriously.
- Prior to here you were cooking all over town
and Chef Eric brought you here.
- Yeah, he was telling me, "You were my sous chef for years,
for years and years so forget Geronimo,
just come with me at Coyote Cafe."
That is the reason I came here to Coyote Cafe.
- It's amazing to look at the table
and this kind of tells the legacy of Coyote Cafe.
Cheers to what you guys are doing here.