Today we left town at around 11:30 for Taos. We stopped at The Range in Bernalillo for lunch a little after noon. There was a special menu and we both ordered off of it. Suzette ordered a Mediterranean Egg Sandwich with egg whites cooked with greens including spinach, the bread was smeared with pesto ($7.99). I ordered the two tamale plate with double beans. The beans were boiled pinto beans and very delicious. I had eaten a piece of quiche for breakfast so I ate only one of the tamales and half the beans. The tamales were stuffed with carne adovado and the carne adovado sauce was used to sauce the tamales, so it was very spicy.
Then we drove to the Taos Guesthouse and checked into the room we like next to the hot tub area by 2:45. We got settled in and then went to the Harwood Museum in time for the 3:30 p.m. opening of the Art Show and wine tasting. The Culinary Arts division of the Taos High School was cooking and they had come up with some lovely items, such as a skewered half of a yellow and red cherry tomato on either side of a piece of fresh mozzarella cheese garnished with vinaigrette and micro greens. There were four wineries pouring: a Clos de Val 2009 Stag's Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon (one of the best wines I drank at the Winter Wine Festival), an Italian importer, Vivac and Black Mesa. I immediately walked over to Clos de Val and saw that the wine being poured was from the Stag's Leap Wine district. I soon found out that Clos de Val is next door to Chimney Rock and Shaefer and that the wine district is very small. It lies on the eastern slope of Napa Valley east of Rutherford.
I then went to the next table of Italian wines and tasted a good 2007 Brunello and two lovely whites, a Soave Reserve and an even more interesting Sardinian vermentino.
The art in the silent auction this year was not a good as last year's, mostly reproductions of photos and posters, although there was a signed Fonseca poster that both of us liked.
We met the couple that owned the Mosaic restaurant that we had made reservations at for dinner. The husband was named George Bartel and was from Fort Worth. He was the son of a lawyer with the Cantey Hanger firm named Harry Bartel, who I had heard of.
Even more interesting was meeting Ann Quinn, who has moved to Taos. She was also from Fort Worth and was my mother's banker when she ran the women's banking division of the Continental National Bank in Fort Worth. What a small world.
I toured the storage areas in the basement where the collection is stored and the museum is photographing the collection. We were pleased to see that they had named a gallery space for Bob Ellis and Caroline Lee.
Then at 5:30 we were finished and went to the La Fonda Hotel on the plaza to eat dinner at the Mosaic Restaurant.
We were the first to arrive and were the only diners other than another couple and a few folks at the bar during the time we were at the restaurant. The menu was limited but interesting. It included Bouillabaisse, Cassoulet, Orecchiete with an Italian sausage and beef Bolognese. Suzette selected Cassoulet and I selected the orecchiete that George had recommended.
We did not see any cheap good wine, so we asked the waiter if there as a good cheap Spanish wine by the glass and he said there was a Monistral. We took two glasses of it. They gave us a $2.00 per glass discount making the total of $6.00 per glass.
We were served an appetizer of lentil mousse on a sweet potato chip garnished with a beet chip.
We both thought the dinner was good but not great. Putting the orcchiete on a bed of fresh baby spinach leaves was a nice touch. The cassoulet had slices of Spanish Chorizo in it that was lovely and spicy. In fact the pasta was seasoned with red pepper flakes that made it quite spicy also. After the spicy carne adovado sauce on the tamales at lunch my throat was a little raw and I reacted to the pepper flakes with a cough or two. Suzette sent the cassoulet back to be re-heated because she found the heat to be uneven in the dish, even though it seemed to be baked in a ceramic dish. It was fun to eat hardy peasant food on a cold windy night.
After dinner we ordered a Chocolate torte with flambeed strawberries and whipped cream and took it back to the Guesthouse and read and ate dessert and went to bed.
Bon Appetit
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