Pasture-raised, Local Beef!

The Atrisco Cafe is pleased to serve pasture-raised ground and roast beef from Sunnyside Meats and East Pines Ranch in Southern Colorado. This beef is raised by the Heaton Family without hormones and is finished with non-GMO grain grown by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe of Towaoc, Colorado. These cattle live their entire lives on the ranch and are humanely processed by the Zink family of Sunnnyside Meats, in their facility designed with input from Temple Grandin, renowned animal welfare specialist. We think this is simply the cleanest, best tasting beef available, and you WILL taste the difference. Enjoy it in a roast beef burrito, green chile cheeseburger, green chile stew, and all our ground and roast beef dishes. *

We are the only restaurant in Santa Fe serving Sunnyside beef and are blessed to partner with these family owned businesses to serve the best beef available and support local environmental and economic sustainability.

* Due to lack of availability, sirloin steaks are conventional.

Real Food
Locally Grown and Produced

Serving great food with local ingredients is not easy. It is not as simple as choosing to shop at a health food store instead of a supermarket. Many ingredients simply are not available consistently or at a price low enough to keep our menu prices reasonable. Working with small growers, ranchers, and producers requires years of relationship building, understanding, trust, and a sense of humor! But when you are able to build these partnerships, the results can be amazing.

We are pleased to partner with the following local family-owned businesses and growers. In todays corporatized and homogenized world, we are blessed to partner with these businesses whose owners are hands-on and take great pride in the food they produce.

Lamb Ribs and Ground Lamb: Antonio and Molly Manzanares of Shepherd’s Lamb in Tierra Amarilla. The Manzanares are the only producers of certified-organic lamb in New Mexico, and among the only ranchers in the United States who still graze sheep on wild land, moving from low country to mountains and back to pasture according to the season. Lamb Ribs are available Thursdays in season (roughly late September to April) and organic lamb burger is the Wednesday special.

Sun Dried Red Chile Pods: Leticia and Mario Carrasco, Carrasco Chili Farm, Salem. It’s harder and harder to get sun dried red chile pods. Most big producers generally only dry them in ovens these days. The flavor and text is not the same. Leticia grows Sandia pods, let’s them dry on the vine, and puts love in every case. Leticia farms the same land her father did, carrying on the family tradition. The Atrisco and our sister restaurant Tomasita’s have a multi-generational relationship with these hard working farmers. For years Georgia Mayrol at Tomasita’s got her chile from Leticia’s father, Raul Delgado. As Letica took over what was then Delgado Farms, George too over Tomasita’s and started the Atrisco Cafe with the same values our parents instilled in us.

We make our red chile using the whole pod - what is locally referred to “caribe.” We pull off the stem, remove most of the seeds, and rinse the pods thoroughly, Then we soak them for 4 hours and grind them wet using our fancy grinder. This gives the cleanest, purest red chile with virtually no skins.

Green Chile: Loraine and Steve Franzoy, Vegetable Products, and Scott Adams, Adams Produce, Hatch. All our green chile is processed by Vegetable Products and in Hatch. Steve is green chile royalty - his great grandfather Joseph immigrated from Austria and started farming chile in the Hatch Valley in the 1920’s. All of Vegetable Products chile is grown by Steve’s cousin Scott Adams of Adams Produce. Scott is a fourth generation Hatch farmer, and his son Tyson now leads the operation. Because of the lack of farm labor, much green chile production is moving south of the border to Mexico. The Adam’s are bucking this trend to keep it local.

Corn tortillas, posole, chips, and tamale masa: Margie and Tony Hernandez of La Mexicana, Albuqerque. La Mexican is the oldest tortilla factory in New Mexico. It was started by Tony’s grandfather, and they still produce their products the old-school way. The corn is first made in to nixtamal; the corn is first soaked, then cooked, in a lime solution, enhancing both the flavor and the nutritional value of the corn. The nixtamal is then made into tortillas, chips, and masa. All their corn is from Sunny State Products of San Jon, New Mexico.

Raw Honey: B’s New Mexico Honey Farm, Albuquerque. Sopaipillas with honey are the perfect compliment to a meal with spicy green or red chile. All our honey is from B’s New Mexico Honey Farm. B’s pure, raw, naturally organic honey is gathered from areas all over the state: from the mountains of Northern and Southern New Mexico to the valleys and plains of Central New Mexico. As the seasons change, the honey differs in color and flavor depending on what blossoms the honey bees visit.

Chicos: Jesus Guzman, Nambe. A chico is sweet corn that is dried in a real wood—fired horno. They have a distinctive color and sweet, smoky flavor, and a great condiment to pinto beans. Jesus Guzman, has been growing corn and making chicos on his farm in Nambe since 1980. Jesus has provided our chicos for years! Check him out at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market.