Restaurant Review: Red Sage

Sage advice

By: Susan Meadows
Published online: Friday, July 29, 2011
Appeared in: Pasateimpo

Chef Michael Meisel left the trading floor long ago, but he’s still surrounded by gamblers since being promoted to chef de cuisine at Red Sage in April. Before earning the top toque, Meisel listed local restaurants The Pink Adobe, The Old House at the Eldorado Hotel, and Aqua Santa on a long résumé that also includes Goldman Sachs.

Red Sage is the 2008 reincarnation of Mark Miller’s once-trendy Washington, D.C., restaurant of the same name, which closed in 2007 about the time Miller sold Coyote Café in Santa Fe. With that DNA, one expects great things from Red Sage, and Meisel has been working hard since April; I know because I dined at Red Sage in March. Let’s just say that what you can expect now are well-trained, knowledgeable servers who care that you enjoy yourself. There’s also a new menu, good off-list wines by the glass, and more attention in the kitchen. The price category, however, puts Red Sage in the company of Santa Fe’s culinary stratosphere. Meisel hasn’t quite conquered those heights, but he has, after all, just begun his ascent.

Sustainable is (rightly) one of the current buzzwords in Santa Fe’s best kitchens, and Meisel is doing his part with wild Alaskan halibut and New Mexico lamb. The main courses on the summer menu are preceded by “The Trail Head” — bar snacks like “today’s taco” and a cheese platter plus other dishes that can play light meal or appetizer roles. The calamari are large, tender rings in a light tempura-style batter served on a smear of assertive garlic aioli with a fresh, spicy salsa.

The Spanish bread salad is a copious bowl of fresh spinach and radicchio studded with chunks of house- made bread, marcona almonds, cured chorizo, red onions, and yellow peppers; its only failing was a slightly-too-sharp vinaigrette. The buttermilk ranch salad unfortunately included some old, tired leaves among the butter lettuce and braised baby artichokes that were past their prime (and their season) in midsummer. The rich slices of avocado went better anyway with the strips of good, hot green chile, but I also wanted more goat cheese in the buttermilk goat cheese dressing. A request for a green salad off the menu brought a nice little mixed salad with another unbalanced vinaigrette.

The ever-changing, generous basket of house breads with assorted house-flavored butters — a bonus for ordering a main course — might warrant skipping the Trail Head in favor of spicy corn bread sticks sweet as corn candy or miniature muffins that you want to take home for breakfast. The halibut had a crunchy crust and perfectly cooked interior. The tomatillo salsa spiked with sweet shrimp and chunks of chorizo make this an outstanding dish marred only by a little watery pool that collected at the bottom of the bowl one evening.

Though the lamb rack arrived closer to medium than the medium-rare ordered, it was meltingly tender and resting on a delicious mix of quinoa, tomatillo, and mango for a completely satisfying dish. The young rotisserie chicken is a whole, plump baby bird decon- structed into manageable legs and breasts. If not dry, it lacked succulence, while the accompanying roasted potatoes were undercooked and the other vegetables blah. The green chile pork enchilada likewise disappointed — slightly watery pork, soggy tortillas, and saffron rice that, though bright yellow, lacked any saffron flavor.

The honey apple strudel — call it a baklavudel — was a standout dessert with piñon nuts and honey in the flaky pastry layers surrounding the apple filling and a scoop of F. X. O’Reilly’s delicious ice cream on the side. The other two desserts might have been in the experimental stages when I tried them; there was no dessert menu yet. The blueberry panna cotta was forgettable but had good texture. The brownie compensated for being too cakelike with thick frosting, caramel sauce, and more of that good ice cream.

Skip the cavernous dining room in favor of the bar or patio, despite the surprising lack of view in that potentially spectacular setting and patio chairs that could win a most-uncomfortable trophy. Give Meisel a chance; he’s already worked wonders.