Santa Fe Tapas in New Orleans

Santa Fe Tapas
1327 St. Charles Ave
New Orleans, LA 70130

I’ve driven past this place many times and so I when I saw a Groupon for it, I jumped at the chance. I wasn’t too sure what to expect so I went in with no presumptions. There was only one woman working at lunch time and so it took a while before we got seated and our menus. When we asked for suggestions, she leaned in and the smell of smoke overpowered all my senses.  I was also sad to see that other tables got chips and salsa and our table did not. I wonder why?

beef empanada

We started off with an order of beef empanadas. They were crispy and pretty flavorful and the corn salsa was very refreshing.

crabcake

The crab cakes didn’t have much flavor but the jalapeno tartar sauce was the redeeming quality of this dish.

grilled chicken

The brioche bread was pretty good but the chicken was extremely dry. I had to ask for some sort of sauce to moisten it and was brought Crystal hot sauce. Despite the chicken being dry, the spices on it were pretty delicious. The yucca fries were extremely dry as well, and very bland.

tamale

I think out of all the dishes, the tamale stayed true to the cuisine of origin. I had the braised pork tamale with poblano sauce (which was yum!). Overall, I wasn’t really impressed with this meal but I did go for lunch and apparently they have an entirely separate dinner menu.