RUNNING FOR MAGISTRATE

Running for eMagistrat

Four hopefuls vying for open seat on Santa Fe County Magistrate Court bench

BY GRANT CRAWFORD grant@sfreporter.com

Four hopefuls are campaigning to replace Judge George Anaya, Jr., for the Division 2 seat on the Santa Fe County Magistrate Court bench.

Anaya has announced he will not seek reelection after serving more than 25 years.

Magistrate judges handle a variety of criminal misdemeanors, landlord-tenant disputes and traffic violations. They spend much of their time on DWI cases, but they also hear civil cases with an amount in controversy of up to $10,000, as well as felony preliminary hearings to determine probable cause.

In a so-called “court of the people,” the next judge presiding over Division 2 will hear cases that directly impact local residents, addressing myriad social issues at Santa Fe County’s core. With no Republicans filing, the winner of the June 7 Democratic primary will take Anaya’s seat after the general election. The candidates have somewhat varied backgrounds as paralegals, court managers, clerks and prosecutors. Magistrate judges in New Mexico are not required to hold law degrees, and just one of the candidates does.

The contestants are John Baca, Dev Atma Khalsa, Melissa Mascareñas and Michael Roybal.

Baca, 44, a longtime sports referee who goes by the nickname “Baby Blue,” worked as a court manager for 18 years, serving under past magistrates, while simultaneously working as a reserve deputy sheriff. Now, he works for the New Mexico State Land Office as an executive secretary and administrator. He also helps “people at their lowest times of need” at the Rivera Family Funeral Home, he says.

“I want to do more for the community,” Baca says. “The crime problem is a big issue. Me being out in the community and being out with the student athletes in sports, I want to be able to reach out to them and hopefully try to guide these kids in the right direction.”

Baca says the caseloads for the First Judicial District Magistrate judges have grown tremendously in recent years, but believes he has the wherewithal to handle the stress.

“I wouldn’t have any problem seeing that many cases, because I used to be the clerk for the judge at one time,” he says. “The only difference is now I’m going to be the one doing the case and making my judgment on what is handed to me.”

Khalsa, also 44, handled cases in private practice for two years before moving to the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office in 2019. As an assistant DA, he juggles a docket of about 60 to 80 felony cases at the Rio Arriba Magistrate Court. The only lawyer to file for the magistrate seat, Khalsa says that qualification by itself “is not enough…to make me the best candidate, but I am the best candidate.”

Khalsa has developed a five-point plan to focus on court transparency; housing equity; “rights-focused DWI cases”; identifying addicted populations; and ending violence. He says there is no better place than the Magistrate Court to inform the public on issues such as where to find rental assistance in landlord-tenant situations.

“That may circumvent your entire need to be in court,” he tells SFR.

With regard to housing equity, Khalsa says “people need to know their judge is going to be fair” in disputes between renters and property owners.

The state Supreme Court recently ordered that law enforcement officers aren’t required to appear for pretrial interviews, which officials believe will help improve New Mexico’s historically low DWI conviction rate. Khalsa says even if police don’t appear, he would expect prosecutors to present evidence in a streamlined process.

Khalsa believes Santa Fe is appropriately connecting people with addictions to services, rather than using “punishment for punishment’s sake.” He also wants to address New Mexico’s high domestic-violence murder rate by using quick action and consistent penalties—and installing a domestic violence court program.

Born and raised in the Pojoaque Valley, Mascareñas went to work as a paralegal at the First Judicial District Court with Judge Petra Jimenez Maes after graduating from the College of Santa Fe with a degree in public administration. She worked there for nine years before moving with Maes to the state Supreme Court in 1998.

Former Chief Justice Patricio Serna “is a great mentor to me, and also the late District Judge Carol Vigil,” Mascareñas says. “Judge Carol would always tell me, ‘You need to run for judge Melissa.’ I would say, ‘I will run for judge one of these days,’ and now I’m doing it.”

Mascareñas eventually moved on to the New Mexico Environment Department. An advanced paralegal and chief records manager, she was responsible for all of the records that came into the department. For 17 years, she accompanied attorneys and general counsel to hearings and filed court documents.

Now 54, she spends time volunteering on the Santa Fe Fiesta Council, or serving as the vice regent for the Catholic Daughters of the Americas.

“I think our community is important,” Mascareñas says. “I think as citizens we need to be able to help each other out. In being a magistrate judge, because I’m so involved in my community, I know my community, and I think that I can better help people that way.”

At 32 years old, Roybal says he’d bring needed youth to the bench. He has worked in the courts since 2014, starting off at the magistrate level. He then moved to the clerk’s office at the First Judicial District Court, before he was asked to serve as court monitor for Judge Jason Lidyard.

Roybal says his time under Lidyard has allowed him to explore a wide range of cases.

“That’s one thing I can really bring to the table: the ability to adapt to each kind of case that comes before the court,” he says. “I understand that as a judge, I will have the jurisdiction to make an impact on someone’s life when they come before the court.”

He says he’s seen people go in and out of the court system, which is why Roybal decided to run for office. It’s time, he says, that elected officials begin addressing repeat offenders to make them functioning members of society.

“That’s my goal, to be proactive and not reactive,” he says. “I’d really like to get my hands dirty and start new programs that the court allows to really focus on rehabilitating our offenders back, while they are held accountable for the crimes they’ve been convicted of.”

Dev Atma Khalsa

John Baca

Melissa Mascareñas

Power of the Plate

Local restaurant owners find new ideas amid consistent frustrations

BY RILEY GARDNER riley@sfreporter.com

Running a restaurant is hard when the economy is booming and even harder under the pandemic-driven circumstances of today. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics found the cost of eating out rose 5.8% this year, representing the largest jump in nearly four decades. With employees demanding more pay (and who can blame them?) plus transport and energy costs on the rise, smaller businesses are taking the brunt of the drama.

Restaurant owners across Santa Fe are learning how to get creative amid an evolving market with profits in short supply.

“The price of ribs has gone up 100% in certain cases,” Josh Baum, co-owner of

The Ranch House (2571 Cristos Road,

(505) 424-8900) and Rustica (2574 Camino Entrada, (505) 780-5279) on the Southside tells SFR. “And you can’t justify increasing the price on your menu from $30 to $60.”

In the last year alone, median beef prices in the country have risen around 16%. Energy costs rose nearly 25% in the last year, too; wages and inflation also are going up. When beef costs climb higher than other common foods, it makes running a BBQcentered restaurant far more challenging. Even as folks return to indoor dining more regularly and the weather allows restauranteurs to open their outdoor dining options, that doesn’t automatically pan out into increased profit margins. And, Baum notes, the irony of this situation is that his restaurants are packed.

“By the numbers, business is up, way more than even pre-pandemic numbers,” he says, “but prices are up for all our operations. Staff shortages are everywhere, and I actually think it’s partly because we’ve tapped out the market here. Everything is just a little shorter, a little more stressful.”

Baum’s approach is novel to the whole business concept—for the moment, he’s eschewed trying to make a profit. For someone who’s worked in food all his life, starting out as a 16-year old kid working front-of-house to training under esteemed chefs in France, Baum knows the importance of keeping the doors open when dozens of staffers depend on the business for an income.

“It’s too hard to say where anything is going right now,” he adds. “With The Ranch House especially, at the moment it can’t be the same looking forward. What we’re not trying to do is to make up the cost. We’re breaking even until we see where the market goes and trying to wait it out. So our goal really is to remain steady with our customers.”

Marcel Remillieux, co-owner of the newly opened Mille (451 W. Alameda St., (505) 930-5492) with his wife, Stephanie, has been flabbergasted by how their new French-focused café and bakery is faring. The Remillieuxs chose to open in the cold winter months—a time absent the thrill of promenading along downtown streets—but were surprised by diner numbers. They were not expecting big business, yet Mille became a new favorite for locals and visitors in short order..

“I certainly won’t complain,” he says. “It’s just that, as a surprise, it came way quicker than I would’ve expected.”

The Remillieuxs worked as scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Marcel grew up in France as one in a long line of bakers. Originally, the couple spurred the now-departed Fleur de Lys in Los Alamos, a café and small grocery, but with ever-increasing rent costs in the little city to our north, the Remillieuxs phased their lives and business to Santa Fe full time.

Marcel sees restaurant evolution in our current times as a necessity—a time during which owners, like the hourly workers we’ve heard so much about, start getting serious about building ownership and a profitable business while doing what they can to make everything more streamlined for customers. In his eyes, the casual dining experience is quickly becoming the new norm. “We wanted to control our destiny, so we knew early on we had to own real estate and keep the costs of it flat. We had to put all the eggs in one basket,” he explains. “I don’t enjoy going to a place and you have all those random extra charges. [At Mille] you order at the counter, you get a number, we bring the food and we leave you alone. We’re purposefully light on the waiter service. We want to keep prices reasonable, and we don’t expect tips.”

Kenneth Joseph, owner of the Luna Santa Fe center and its newest project, the CHOMP Food Hall (505 Cerrillos Road, Ste. B101), echoes Marcel’s thoughts about a need for far more casual dining options where consumers gain a larger sense of control. CHOMP’s offerings vary between Bottega del Vino, a full wine bar, to chef Kim Nath’s Inspired Khmer Cuisine and its pan-Asian offerings. You’ll find artisanal wood-fired pizza as well, plus the return of an outpost from Jambo Café and chef Ahmed Obo. From the perspective of a landlord, a food hall’s income means less reliance on a single tenant.

“It’s always better to have 10 tenants in a building than one,” Joseph says. “When a smaller tenant goes, the process of replacing them is a lot easier. That, obviously, guarantees income.”

Joseph found inspiration from the food halls of major cities. He cites Denver’s myriad options, which give consumers a sense of novelty and experimentation. Faneuil Hall in Boston is another place Joseph recalls, noting not only large crowds, but how a food hall can become a venue for music acts, dancers and artists. And though Faneuil Hall has a 200year advantage on CHOMP, building up a mini community center probably won’t take so long, according to Joseph.

“The concept is this burgeoning trend for high-quality casual dining within a space that lends itself to events,” he tells SFR. “We’re hosting the First Friday art-walks here every month. We’ve done a lot with Santa Fe Pride and the Human Rights Alliance. This place will have live music, DJs, lots of cross-pollination between the food, curated wine, cocktails and retail.”

Alma Castro took over the legendary Cafe

Castro (2811 Cerrillos Road, (505) 473-

5800) from her parents in 2019. Within a few months, however, she was thrown into the wringer and faced with state-mandated pandemic closures. With that came an upheaval of more traditional models, and Castro found itself moving to a computer-based system and partnering with food delivery app DoorDash. Readers may think that’s a no-brainer, and for Castro it was, but obvious transitions don’t mean easy transitions.

“A lot of our older, long-time employees, that transition was hard for them,” Castro says. “Some of them decided it meant it was time to step away.”

Café Castro is a family establishment, running off the efforts of multi-generational talents, and when older employees can’t handle technological shifts, it’s not just a break in manpower. Decades-long methods can also get lost in the shuffle, and newer employees must learn new responsibilities, meet regular customers accustomed to certain realities and balance traditions with an ever-expanding take-out model. It’s hard to start working at any new restaurant—it’s perhaps harder when the business has history.

“To-go orders doubled, and then they just never went back down at all,” Castro continues. “So there were a lot of changes at once. We added a patio, started up counter service in the summertime to see how it worked; we changed the tipping system, too, so everyone had base wages. And, of course, that means a lot of the long-timers struggled a bit—30 years does a number on you. You’re exhausted.”

Exhausted, indeed. That’s a sentiment many in the foodservice industry have no doubt faced in the best of times; now imagine it as the world burns and your 25th table before lunch is impatiently wondering aloud what happened to their chips. Some restaurant owners, like the Remillieuxs, thrive in the new unknown, but he’s also thinking ahead.

“Eventually, restaurants won’t have a choice when it comes to streamlining their operations,” Marcel Remillieux muses. “A lot of people left, not because they don’t like it, but because it’s hard work that never ends. They are treated poorly and they’ve got families to feed. They won’t come back. I don’t predict the future, but I think something has to change. The traditional model is needing to be updated.”

SANTA FE RESTAURANT DIRECTORY 2022

COMPILED BY RILEY GARDNER

Where the locals wine, dine and get into that Santa Fe vibe

With pandemic restrictions lifted, we’ve rarely seen restaurants so full of patrons. And while we hope for positive trends in the future, the 2022 SFR Restaurant Directory feels like a collective breather. As Santa Feans flock back to the city’s wide array of culinary institutions, take a moment to remember the supply chain issues and staff shortages that’ll be with us for the foreseeable future. We all want great food, restaurants want to serve great food and these places are doing the best they can. Mask when you need to, tip well and enjoy yourself. Should something new come around or if we missed something, drop us a line so we can update the online directory at editor@sfreporter.com.

SF’s Major FOOD DISTRICTS

N

AIRPORT RD.

Southside P.25

WEST ALAMEDA/ AGUA FRIA P.19

CERRILLOS RD.

Cerrillos Road Corridor P.22 North of Santa Fe P.27

ST. FRANCIS DR.Railyard/ Guadalupe Stretch

P.17 Downtown P.13

Triangle District/St. Michael’s drive P.21 SOUTH CAPITOL P.19

Rodeo Road P.25

R OD EO RD .

South of Santa Fe P.27

DOWNTOWN

35° North Coffee

Santa Fe Arcade, 60 E San Francisco St., (505) 983-6138 A classic espresso bar with a variety of custom in-house roasts, plus pastries and spacious trappings, including a patio overlooking Water Street, make your caffeine intake easy. The specialized Latitude Adjustment brew (coffee blended with organic grass-fed butter, MCT and coconut oil) means that adventurous friend from Portland can feel more included.

315 Restaurant & Wine Bar

315 Old Santa Fe Trail, (505) 986-9190 Seasonally inspired French cuisine with over 20 options to fill the glass with red or white. Go easy with a charcuterie board (plus wine), roasted butternut squash soup (plus wine) or perhaps a grilled branzino (maybe add some wine). A rotating series of bar specials means light or heavy fare is always on the menu. With wine.

Agapao Coffee & Tea (The Mud Hut)

105 E Marcy St, Ste. C, (505) 670-5466 From the little stand on St. Mike’s to new downtown digs—we’re so proud of the house Dave Black and family built. Quality coffee and pastries for those on the downtown go.

AGAVE Restaurant & Lounge

Eldorado Hotel & Spa, 309 W San Francisco St., (505) 995-4530 Agave, New Mexico’s favorite spiky plant, is just as pleasant in one of Santa Fe’s favorite happy hour spots. Think modern with that timeless Santa Fe style; AGAVE’s drinks are just as rich as their decadent dishes. Don’t miss out on killer appetizers, with dishes ranging from Mexican shrimp cocktail to margherita flatbread.

Amaya Restaurant

Hotel Santa Fe, 1501 Paseo de Peralta, (505) 955-7805 Lamb chops make the knees weak and the duck breast might knock you out. During some seasonal months, one has the option to dine in an authentic teepee with Native cuisine (with proper reservations, mind you), and the winter months offer warm drinks and a glowing fire.

The Anasazi Restaurant, Bar & Lounge

Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi, 113 Washington Ave., (505) 988-3236 Listed by Wine Enthusiast as one of America’s top 100 wine restaurants, the Anasazi Restaurant offers a Scottish salmon or beef medallions, breakfast options such as Anasazi chilaquiles rojos o verdes (which includes cotija cheese, egg, sour cream and avocado) or a simple yet elegant smoked salmon bagel. Did we also hear they offer private tequila tastings?

Bang Bite Filling Station

510 Galisteo St., (505) 469-2345 Usually located at Santa Fe Brewing Co.’s downtown outpost The Brakeroom, Bang Bite is Santa Fe’s legendary food truck. Go classic with a green chile cheeseburger, or experience the bliss of their Ooh Papi burger (maple bacon jam plus garlic aioli—oof, we just went dizzy) or their OMG pulled pork burger. Pair with a Santa Fe Brewing alcoholic option, and you’re in for a blissful period of consumption.

The Bell Tower Bar

La Fonda on the Plaza, 100 E San Francisco St., (505) 982-5511 It may be a seasonal spot, but we have a special place in our hearts for institutions that mark closing hours as “sunset.” Sweet rooftop views mixed with magnificent margaritas make for marvelous summer nights. Locals like to take out-of-towners here to make it seem like we’ve got our lives together.

La Boca (Original Location)

72 W Marcy St., (505) 982-3433 Chef James Campbell Caruso’s tapas don’t play around. Go for a sautéed shrimp option or a Moroccan carrot hummus plate. Maybe try the Basque-styled tapas for a little variety, and check out a multitude of special events, from music guests to authentic Spanish flamenco performances.

La Boca (Taberna Location)

125 Lincoln Ave., Ste. 117, (505) 982-3433 Yes indeed, dear readers—if you can’t get enough of La Boca, you can come back another night (or the same, we withhold judgment here) and check out Chef Caruso’s courtyard setup. We know it’s hard to get too much of that Santa Fe aesthetic, so you might as well go on overdrive here.

Boultawn’s Bakery

226 N Guadalupe St., (505) 983-9006 Notable for incredible bagels (a rare find here) Boultawn’s offers treats ranging from a classic Frito pie to pastries, lunch fare like sandwiches, soups and salads—plus in-house ice cream. How many places can say they make the effort to do all that?

The Bull Ring

150 Washington Ave., Ste. 108, (505) 983-3328 When a steak wins more awards than you probably will in your lifetime, maybe it’s something worth checking out? SFR’s readers even crowned The Bull Ring as having the best steak in our 2021 Best of Santa Fe poll. Rib Eye? New York strip? Thirtyplus-day-aged prime strip? They’ve got it.