We decided to take it easy this morning and leisurely got ready for the day. We skipped breakfast at the hotel and instead decided to have an earlier lunch. This turned out to be a good thing, because Caf Pasquals is quite popular and our wait time was an hour. We used this time to do some shopping. Went to a great chile store next door and bought three different types of red chile. Then we walked around looking for pottery, no luck yet.
When our table was ready, we got a text and we headed to the restaurant. The wait now was an hour and a half, when we left it was up to 2 hours. It was well worth the wait. The place is very small and there was no personal space, almost sitting on top of each other. The large table in the middle was a table, people sitting with people they didnt know. But again, the food is worth it. (It doesnt seem very Covid safe, we are getting tested when we get home).
bacon, roasted green chile strips, jack cheese, heirloom tomato, mayo, lettuce served on a toasted Jerry didnt even mind the mayo. A word about the it was actually like bread not what you think of cornbread. It was really incredible, big contender for dish of the day.
I stayed more on the breakfast side and had a Durango Omelette. Three organic eggs, diced far mani rosemary ham, jack cheese, scallions, guacamole, sauted cremini mushrooms, sour cream and that was all in the inside. I choose both red and green chile sauce for the top. Both were really good, Jerry said the red was better, but I am just more partial to green. Instead of beans, or has browns it came with a side of oven roasted sweet potatoes, with just a hint of we think paprika.
When we finished, we dropped off our chile purchases back in the room and headed for the State Capital. The New Mexico State Capital building is full of New Mexican Art. It is was all very fine art not street vendors. The most interesting thing to me, was something we saw when we were there on Christmas Eve. At the
time we did not know the meaning, but now we do. The It was a sculpture that had all of the names of the Native peoples that no longer exist, this is why Tillamook was on the monument. It is a poignant reminder of just how badly the native people have been treated since the Spanish, French and British colonization began. Of course, the prize for mistreatment clearly goes to the US. After all we had the policy of Manifest Destiny, which was basically convert them or kill them.
After that we were off to the New Mexico Museum of Art. It was a good representation of Southwest Art. It was also very easy to navigate took just over an hour to go through. One of the more interesting exhibits was called Poetic Justice a series of paintings, sculptures and other installations representing the disparate treatment of black, brown, native, women, the list goes on, people. My favorite was entitled The Dogg Express, a train where the cars had names of the various minority, mainly that have more and more gentrified and how roads, trains, busses, highways further deepened the systemic racism in this country.
After that it was off to a kitchen shop to see if we could find cazuelas, no such luck. Finished the day with a cocktail at the hotel bar. They again are so overstaffed because of Covid, the service is a bit slow, but we expect that, clearly the entitled woman from Texas was not having it, as she stormed out when she was told she would have to wait as the bartender was serving other customers.
Tarragon got his evening walk in the very cold outside and now all of us are just chilling before dinner. Tarragon is being a watch cat at the moment as he is staring at the door because the people in adjacent rooms are very loud and he needs to know what they are up to.
Just back from dinner, and it was a very pleasant surprise. The service was exceptional, the food was phenomenal.
