The 2nd Street area in Santa Fe has quickly turned into one of the more interesting food areas in town. 2nd Street Brewery has been there forever, Iconik Coffee has been there for about three years, but the past couple of months have yielded two promising new kids:
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Biadora Bakery - a really good French and Italian bakery and patisserie that seems to get better with every passing week. As excellent as the bakery stuff is (croissants, palmiers, etc.), the patisserie style desserts are almost certainly the best I know in the state. We had a chocolate hazelnut mousse tart on our last visit that nailed the flavor, texture, and look. I love Dulce for American-style baked goodies, but Biadora really steps up Santa Fe’s game for European-style stuff.
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La Lecheria - its official opening was only last week, and it’s super weird that to my knowledge this is (a few upscale dessert menus aside) the only ice cream maker in the city, but hey, better late than never. Started by the owner of Fire & Hops, they’re big into local, all natural ingredients. They currently have four perennial flavors, the best of which we tried was the mint chocolate chip, which actually tasted like, you know, mint, not synthetic extract. The seasonal flavors were swinging for the fences and not always getting a hit: the peach cardamom just didn’t pack enough flavor, coming across as bland; the miso brown sugar failed in the opposite direction, boldly tasting as weird as it sounded. Both the red chile cinnamon and the cantaloupe sorbet were phenomenal. It may take a little while for this place to completely find its feet, but I’m very glad it’s around.
