Passionof thePalate
Day
Fine dining doesn’t need to be stuffy, and a local restaurant group is making sure it’s not
BY MEGAN KAMERICK | PHOTOS BY BONCRATIOUS
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t the Trattoria A Mano restaurant in Santa Fe, there’s a photo of Albert Einstein taking a break from pondering the mysteries of the universe to do some two-wheeling. Below his photo is a quote: “Life is like a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” We can all relate, but Jennifer Day, perpetually in motion, is a perfect embodiment of this idea. She is the co-owner and creative force behind New Mexico Fine Dining, a management company that oversees every aspect of a restaurant’s creation. The company owns several Santa Fe restaurants: Trattoria A Mano, Bouche Bistro, and their newest, Jimmy D’s and Lucky Goat. Day and New Mexico Fine Dining will also bring back longtime local favorite Bobcat Bite later this year and plan to reopen the recently shuttered Maize later this year in a new location with a fresh Southwestern concept.
In her office, as Day talks about her plans for Jimmy D’s and Lucky Goat, her Apple watch pings with messages, including one from a construction crew asking about painting fire hydrant pipes. It’s a typical day, one she spends ordering materials and ensuring that the menus flow from her concept, with the help of New Mexico Fine Dining Culinary Director Andrew MacLauchlan and General Manager Audrey Rodriguez. Given Day’s particular specialties—she’s a fiber artist and an interior designer certified by the American Society of Interior Designers—developing the concept of a restaurant is the beginning of everything. “In terms of what the aesthetic is, I make a decision on what the restaurant is going to be and what we’ll serve, and then it’s my job to decide how we’ll portray the concept to our diners,” she says. Originally from Texas, Day and her husband, Jimmy, bought their first home in
Santa Fe 18 years ago and have been permanent residents here for 10 years. They launched New Mexico Fine Dining in 2017 when Jimmy, a serial entrepreneur and professional cyclist, saw a “For Sale” sign on the Bobcat Bite property while out for a ride. In under two years, the company has expanded from a single property to multiple restaurants. The Days also own and manage car dealerships in Texas and a dirt-moving company in the Permian Basin, and they’re building a storage facility near San Antonio. It makes for a busy life, but Jennifer Day seems to thrive on that, and she doesn’t waste any time. Her typical timeline to launch a new restaurant is seven weeks, and that’s from concept to construction to opening. “It’s not just interior design, and it’s not just food,” she says. “People grade restaurants based on ambience, service, value, and taste, all of which have to work together.” Although she is relatively new to restaurants, Day has years of experience to draw upon in design. “The first thing I do is walk the space, because I have to understand how each part of the space interacts with every other part,” she says. “Then I need to figure out how to make this very attractive to a client who walks in. What do they see? And what they see has to almost scream what the concept of the restaurant is.” Following the purchase of Bobcat Bite, New Mexico Fine Dining bought the existing Bouche Bistro in 2017. Day focused first on the patio because she saw it as the place where diners really wanted to be. It was basically a ceiling and no walls. It was stark, she recalls. “It needed to be a garden, but I didn’t New Mexico Fine Dining owners Jennifer and Jimmy Day Opposite: Jimmy D’s restaurant is an eclectic splash of color and 1960s and 1970s pop art.
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