Cafe Sushi - A Dessert Mirage?

Last year I took a break from rolling sushi and headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a holiday. 

Author Elizabeth Lesser writes that "Santa Fe is a notoriously enchanting place..."

I think one could easily say this about all of New Mexico. I instantly fell in love with its people, the rose-colored mountains, and the adobe ruins at San Ildefonso Pueblo.

But after a week of eating one too many breakfast burritos at the Hotel Santa Fe, I found my taste buds craving sushi.

"You're dreaming pal!" I remember telling myself. "Where, in this arid, sparsely populated dessert are you gonna find a slice of raw fish and a bowl of miso soup?"

Turns out, that on the road to Los Alamos, the Sushi Gods were about to prove me wrong!

This remote town of 12,000 souls, located in Northern New Mexico is where the first atomic bomb was built in the 1940's. Its a non-de-script place, whose most striking feature is the devastation left behind by the Cerro Grande Fire of 2000.

My tour guide, Ella, was driving at a breakneck speed through town when it suddenly appeared without warning - a strip mall and a sign above a restaurant that screamed "Cafe Sushi"!

"Wow!", I exclaimed. "Who would've thought!"   Ella gave me just enough time to snap a photo before she put her foot to the pedal and sped off.

To my great disappointment, there was no time to stop and check it out. My mouth was left watering for what could have been.

Was Cafe Sushi nothing more than a mirage in the hot New Mexican dessert? When I got back home to Canada, I Googled this little restaurant and was surprised to find the following review:

"Cafe Sushi, 3801 Arkansas Avenue, +1 505 662-7131: This tiny hole-in-the-wall sushi bar offers some of the best sushi in the state, the fish always remarkably fresh (considering the location is 1000 miles inland) and expertly prepared. Located in the same out-of-the-way strip mall as Bob's BBQ, above. Open M-F for lunch and dinner. Be warned that seating is scarce and that the hours for this mom-and-pop operation can be rather arbitrary, particularly for dinner: they close as soon as the day's ration of fish and rice is exhausted, which often can be as early as 6:45, so go early."

[http://wikitravel.org/en/Los_Alamos]

I’m heading back to New Mexico soon. And guess where my first stop is? [wink]

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