The 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar staff are well-versed in the flavor profiles of their oysters on the half shell offerings. Oyster Happy Hour is 4-6 p.m. nightly.
For a wallet-friendly night at Joseph’s, order the New Mexico lamb burger topped with green chile and local sheep’s cheese served on a homemade English muffin.
315 Restaurant’s chocolate pots de crème is a can’t miss dessert.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
Chef Louis MoskowÌý
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
Chef Joseph Wrede
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
The 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar staff are well-versed in the flavor profiles of their oysters on the half shell offerings. Oyster Happy Hour is 4-6 p.m. nightly.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
Start your meal at Joseph’s Culinary Pub with the duck fat fried polenta served with grilled radicchio andÌý a Gorgonzola sauce.Ìý
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
Chef Joseph Wrede’s cloud cake with caramel sauce, tarragon, and grapefruit is an Italian meringue cake that is simultaneously light and dense.Ìý
Many years ago I made the mistake of criticizing the preparation of a dish I was served at a friend’s restaurant. To clarify, I thought I was giving constructive criticism, but it didn’t land in his ears as such. In fact, it really pissed him off and elicited an angry response not reprintable here as this is a family publication!
As much as we might think we can be perfectly honest when it comes to critiquing a friend’s talent, it’s worth noting that’s not always the case — lesson learned.
Actors, chefs, musicians, and writers might qualify as the most dangerous waters to wander into with an unfavorable judgment; these egos bruise particularly easily. So when I mentioned to my friend Chef Louis Moskow that I wanted to review his 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar after recently enjoying a delicious meal, he replied, “it can’t be done; how can you be honest about a friend’s cooking?â€
I consider myself lucky to claim most of our talented chefs and restaurateurs as friends. My role as restaurant reviewer for Pasatiempo does present a few challenges when it comes to visiting a friend’s eatery to review it, but if you recall our mission statement when I started writing last year, it was to only include places I already felt were going to inspire me to write merits not admonishments.
So to kick off the new year, I decided to cover two of my favorite dining establishments owned by two of my good buddies and wax lyrical about their combined talents. With the media flooded with so much negativity, how about some kinds words to chew on today?
Chefs Louis Moskow at 315 and Joseph Wrede at Joseph’s Culinary Pub have both enjoyed long-term popularity on the local restaurant scene. Wrede and Moskow became friends even before Wrede made the trek from Taos to ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe.
I met them both when I interviewed them, at different times, for the local magazines I have written for over the years. We recognized common spirits in each other and started dining out and hanging out more than 20 years ago. What’s great about the ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe culinary scene is I think most of the players consider each other friends and compadres rather than competitors. (I admit there might be one or two I would avoid in the grocery store — I’ll never tell).
I recently dined at both establishments and can proudly say that each dining experience, although vastly different, was excellent. Kudos to my pals. When I am regularly asked to recommend eateries by both locals and visitors, it’s nice to be able to enthusiastically send them off to either place knowing the meal they will experience will be a good one — and I always reveal that the chef is also a pal of mine.
Both restaurants are roughly the same size, sport cozy bars, win awards for both their cuisine and service, offer parking (a biggie in our town), and are casual eateries — no jackets required. Both chefs are close in age, are major ski and wine enthusiasts, and are passionate about their craft. I am lucky, too, that these guys are always willing to help me with recipes, reservations, hard-to-find ingredients, and moral support.
But if you need to contrast the two places, the differing factor might be in the type of patrons who fill the seats.
Joseph’s seems to attract a younger, perhaps hipper, crowd (I saw man-buns on both diners and staff).That’s not to say that the 315 patrons were the over-the-hill gang, maybe just a little more well-heeled. But given that the price points on both menus are similar, budgets don’t seem to be an issue in either place. Moskow’s menu is mostly classic French, while Wrede loves to dabble with New Mexico ingredients and creative spins on popular dishes.
Although Moskow is technically the chef at 315, he does have a chef de cuisine, Andres Portugues Castro, in the kitchen while he works the front of the house. Let him recommend what you should be drinking from the massive wine list. Moskow knows his stuff, so you can feel confident if he guides you toward a bottle just a bit above the price you were thinking of spending. One of my favorite memories at the restaurant is a dinner I hosted for five friends there, after I received my inheritance from my dad, when we drank Roederer Cristal (my Dad would have been furious toÌýknow I “wasted†my money on booze).
During COVID, Moskow kept the fires burning by selling his interpretation of French fried chicken to-go — his version would make your Southern mama proud. It still appears on the menu and is served simply with mashed potatoes and green beans. A bowl of house-made cavatelli with fava beans, artichoke hearts, spinach, and a decent black truffle cream sauce shows off how creative Moskow and Castro can be.
Chef Louis Moskow’s French fried chicken is served with buttered green beans and mashed potatoes.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
In the new year, fresh fettuccine, seared scallops, and butternut squash join the divine sauce as the pasta on the menu — I’m in. The requisite steak frites is always in style and here is served with herb compound butter or au poivre and lots of crispy, wispy fries, making for perfect bistro fare. I like that many dishes can be prepared gluten-free (and at Joseph’s too), a trend that’s certainly here to stay. This winter, Moskow also brought back two other popular dishes to the menu: his fantastic cassoulet and beef bourguignon. I’m coming back for both.
I can never pass up the homemade vanilla ice cream-stuffed profiteroles drizzled with warm chocolate sauce; you’ll be licking the plate. The homemade ice creams and sorbets come in intriguing options; the creamy mango was so good.
The restaurant offers a full bar and 16-page wine list (note: I’m happy to accept a dinner invitation from anyone who would like to share a bottle of the 2017 Bouchard Pere & Fils Chevalier-Montrachet, $600, or my old standby, Cristal!). Don’t let me scare you, as the wine list offers many selections to fit any budget. 315 regularly receives acclaim for its excellent service, so welcome to Moskow’s new manager, Bryan Laramie, who will be put to the test to carry on the tradition.
***
I give Joseph Wrede credit for starting the duck fat trend when he introduced us to his duck fat fries 27 years ago at his first restaurant, Joseph’s Table in Ranchos de Taos. Now you can buy duck fat in an aerosol can, should you want to spray it on your fries (or anything else) at home, but Wrede is the granddaddy of the flavoring. It appears in a few of his menu items, including my favorite starter in which logs of polenta are fried in it and served with grilled radicchio and sauced with a delicious Gorgonzola sauce — more plate licking here.
I ask our server to have Chef Joe recommend a wine and like Moskow, he knows my relish for sauvignon blancs — so out comes a Domaine de l’Estang Sancerre. Arriving famished, we quickly order a trio of starters: a chile relleno, a crispy tamale with chicken and green chile, and the lamb lollipop with apple jelly. It’s terrific to see and taste, even in relleno and tamale land where classic versions of these local favorites are on so many menus, that Wrede breathes new life into his renditions. The relleno sports an eggy batter and zippy red chile sauce, while the tamale is crispy fried and sided with a spicy tomatillo salsa. The tender local baby lamb chop has a nice char from the jelly caramelizing on the grill.
One the most unusual dishes on the menu that I consider to be Joseph’s signature is the warm charred ratatouille that boasts all the ingredients we think of in the French country classic — zucchini, eggplant, red peppers, and squash — but when scattered on a bed of crunchy fried kale (is there any other way?) with a tart tomato vinaigrette, the combination surprises your senses with flavor, fat, and cold and warm on the same plate. Kinda genius!
For a wallet-friendly night at Joseph’s, order the New Mexico lamb burger topped with green chile and local sheep’s cheese served on a homemade English muffin.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
For a wallet-friendly night, order the New Mexico lamb burger topped with green chile and local sheep’s cheese served on a homemade English muffin. For more creative spins on our local cuisine, Joseph’s veggie enchilada is layered with acorn squash, corn, local chanterelle mushrooms, red chile, and another palate surprise: an East Indian spinach puree that somehow works with the mix. More vegetarian goodness can be found in the root vegetable Napoleon in which the phyllo dough is dusted with cardamom and espresso powder before baking to a delicate crispness — talk about creative use of flavor.
The menu offers cocktails made from New Mexico spirits, a newish concept where restaurants do not have to have a full liquor license as long as they use local booze. For dessert, the cloud cake is an Italian meringue cake that mystifies me as to how it comes together; it’s egg whites with a little sugar and not much else, somehow both light and dense, and comes with a caramel sauce, tarragon, and grapefruit segments — a must try. The butterscotch pudding took me back to the tonsillectomy of my youth, so creamy and perfect but without the sore throat.
I’m blessed to have Messrs. Wrede and Moskow in my brotherhood. My New Year’s wish for all of us is that our lives may be filled with talented singers, musicians, artists, actors, doctors, writers, comedians, lovers, and chefs to make life more delicious. As Shakespeare’s Duke Orsino says in Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love play on, give me excess of it.â€Ìý