El Nido — Restaurant in New Mexico

This restaurant is split into two, an Italian side and then a sushi side which is where we went for dinner. The room was on the smaller side but was decorated beautifully, and well lit. We tried several appetizers, the seaweed salad, the miso soup, and the daily tempura platter. The seaweed salad was crunchy and salty with hints of sesame seed oil and the music soup was so very rich and savory with umamai overtones, both being some of the best I've had. The tempura was also there to play game as the vegetables were perfectly crisped with no excess oil at all and was extremely flaky and cooked perfectly but the platter changes so you better come back!

We started with the Santa fe rolls which had some more tempura, avocado, cucumber and some other sauces, its reminiscent of a California roll if the California roll tried to triple cartwheel into a back-lit and scoring a 10 across the board. The tempura, even though it was inbetwixt suaces and other moist items retained its crispy factor and played beautifully with the other flavors with the supporting feature of the suaces too. Speaking of which the Wasabi here was made fresh, from what it tasted like, and was very flavorful beyond its normal heat factor!

We then tried each of the kenpachi and sake, and the Hamachi and hotate all being nigir versions. The kenpachi(amberjak) was fatty and sublime and coupled with a restraining dip into the soy sauce and Wasabi sent it over the moon and the sake(salmon) had a wonderful texture to it to along with having a simple yet gorgeous flavor profile. The Hamachi was hands down some of the best yellow tail I've ever had the fortune of trying and am now a firm believer in them. The hotage(scallops) was one of my first few expierences with scallops and now ill be trying them in hopes they meet this standard, the rice one these did fall apart more where as every other one managed to stay together but hey, no negative points here.

For desert we tried the basque burnt cheesecake and I had an espresso martini fully loaded, as its normally decaf and I'm not that kind of person, and while the diner liquor is a bit too much for how little you are getting, im very happy the same cant be said for thus martini as we definitely got its worth. The cake had a marvelous hard top and the interior was like a clod had gotten stuck with high shelf cream and a kiss from the chef in a blender and captured it in the cake, I regret not getting one each but the desert was comped for my birthday. The martini was delicious and dangerous as the taste of vodka was absent from my mouth yet all the wonderful flavors were being enhanced by this now warm and jolly glow I felt about me, just be careful if you are a lightweight or designated driver!

All things considered id give this place a 9.5 out of ten and the only reason is that perfection is impossible but lordy loo is this place close, especially when we were expecting to pay 2 or 3 times the price we ACTUALLY paid! If you like sushi, want a fun environment, and get a gorgeous drive to and from, please visit El Nido! P.s. I hope we get to try the...

Didn't want to drive back to Santa Fe for dinner so managed to get a 6PM reservation for that evening. I wasn't expecting much, remembering my last experience here several years ago. I am now a huge fan. The wine list was good -- not great but good, so that would be the only thing for which I would take away points. We arrived at 5:50PM for a 6PM reservation and was seated promptly. Word of caution: if don't have a reservation, you're not going to eat until late in the service, if at all. I went on a Wednesday evening and by 6:30PM, the place was pretty full and there was a 45 minute wait at that point (that's what I overheard being told to someone as I went back to the car to retrieve an umbrella before the rain). The servers were personable and accommodating. These are not the sort of servers you would find at Micheline 5 Star places but these weren't Longhorn servers either. They were veterans who knew what they were doing; were knowledgeable about the menu; knew how to pace the service; and were generally very good for the price point of the place. Noise level: low. There was an older crowd in the place while I was there so that meant no screaming / running-around-the-place kids (thank God!). What to wear? Most were in casual clothes but not jogging shorts or T-shirts -- think jeans and a polo or a nice pants suit for the ladies. There were two younger couples (20-30 somethings) and the ladies had on dresses while the guys had khakis and a collared shirt ... this is most appropriate. Now for the food: the appetizer chosen was the shrimp scampi and it was slap-yo-mama good. No joke. The perfect amount of heat with a broth and crostinis that made you almost want to make a meal of it alone. The server came back and asked if we wanted more crostinis to "make sure that broth doesn't go to waste" and I couldn't say "yes, please" fast enough. Before I forget, let me say that everything delivered to the table was fresh off the oven. I'm talking very hot. Nothing was sitting on the counter waiting to be brought to the table because it was all piping hot. The entrees were the special-of-the-night salmon (very good) and the carbonara. The salmon was good; no lie. But the carbonara is what I ordered and I was terribly impressed with how good it was. I want to go back to have another bowl. The parmesan with the manchego cheese and peas pancetta, with a barely runny egg on top. Man, it was good. I'm sure the desserts are good, too, but I was too stuffed to ask for the cheese cake, and we settled on the mousse tart with fruit that had more crust and fruit than mousse. I'm not saying it was bad, but that's not really my favorite and my spousal unit loves fruit -- thus, we got the fruit. Definitely will be going back next...

This place is nothing special. It was not what we expected on Mother's Day. We made reservations in advance and arrived to be greeted by the host and we sat down. We ordered from the Mother's day brunch menu which was posted online on their website. My mother ordered a rib eye medium steak with the prosciutto wrapped shrimp, but was severely undercooked. We asked to cook it longer and it came back crispy, tough, and full of fat. We had already ordered our dessert. Most of us in our party ordered the Apple upside down cake and after we finished our lunch we were told from our waiter that they ran out of Apple upside down cake and were asked to order either the chocolate cake or the vanilla creme with strawberry. We were perplexed because Mother's day is a busy Holiday, and found El Nido to be unprepared. The waiter after that came to tell us "we ran out of Chocolate cake, so one of you will have to order the vanilla creme instead. Sorry. " Shocked, we explained that we made reservations in advance so that there would be enough dessert for our table especially after taking our order for dessert and then not having enough for our party. Nevertheless, we weren't billed for the dessert per manager request, but the manager should have met us at the table to give us an explanation and apologize. Word to the wise when you make reservations please make sure they have everything on the menu for your party prior to booking otherwise you and your party...