AT THE CHEF'S TABLE
Taking the Long Way Home KIN AT CASTAÑEDA’S SEAN SINCLAIR FINDS HIS PLACE IN HISTORY By Liz Maliga · Photos by Stephanie Cameron
Sean and Katey Sinclair at Castañeda.
“Have you ever been haunted by something you had no idea existed?” asks Sean Sinclair, executive chef and proprietor of the newly opened Bar Castañeda and at Kin at Castañeda (set to open this July). “That’s the only way I can explain how we felt after seeing this building. I woke up thinking about it, I went to bed thinking about it. Not that the building itself is haunted, but I was haunted by it.” Walking into the bright, airy lobby of the Castañeda Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico, accented with a large brass register and ornate ceilings, it’s evident how this place could become an obsession. Built in 1898, and at that time known as La Castañeda, the hotel was one in the Fred Harvey system, a chain of hotels and restaurants along the railways crisscrossing the Southwest. Harvey himself worked in this particular property early on, in the kitchen, in the hotel, tinkering and figuring out how to build his legacy. 28
edible New Mexico | EARLY SUMMER 2019
Elements of the original kitchen––a wooden ice chest, flour bins, a steam table refurbished into a service table––will punctuate the main and private dining rooms, the kitchen, and wine room. In Bar Castañeda, which had its soft opening on April 15, a restored fresco crowns the bar’s freshly stained wooden counter. “It’s one of the most important food buildings in the world, I think,” Sinclair continues. “We’ve lost a lot of historical buildings throughout the Southwest, like the Hotel Alvarado in Albuquerque. A lot of these buildings were condemned, including this one—it hadn’t served guests in seventy-four years. But if you look outside the US, to a place like Tuscany, there are ancient buildings, profitable and running for hundreds of years. This is a version of that.” Critical to the Fred Harvey revitalization is Allan Affeldt, an investor with a passion for restoring these landmarks of the Old Southwest.