Santa Fe Gem: The Compound Restaurant

If you're looking to eat well in Santa Fe, here's how to do it: Turn off of Canyon Road into a dimly lit parking lot and you arrive upon an unassuming building that calls itself the Compound. Open the door and you'll find yourself in a spectacular room that feels both modern and womb-like, the walls and ceilings smothered in what looks like bleached adobe. It's clear why chef Mark Kiffin is a James Beard award-winning chef: his menu is full of tasty New American dishes like the salad of endives and tart apples tossed with Maytag blue cheese and walnut oil and a seared veal chop with fork-crushed yukon gold potatoes and wilted arugula. I went for kabocha squash soup topped with Brussels sprout leaves, which were scattered like rafts across the bowl of bright orange liquid, saving precious pools of truffle oil from sinking into the creamy depths below. That was followed by a buttermilk roast chicken with a foie gras pan gravy so rich that I had to take it home. Good thing it tasted equally delicious out of a doggie bag around 1am.

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