Santa Fe Farmers Market
The Santa Fe Farmers Market represents over 100 active vendors and features hundreds of different agricultural products. To further meet Santa Fe's demand for fresh, local produce, the Market began operating year-round in 2002, and with more and more farmers using extended growing techniques, the "off season" becomes more successful every year.
Santa Fe, and the rest of New Mexico, is known for its huge and spicy plates full of Southwestern food. Restaurants in Santa Fe run from expensive haute Southwestern to down-home fast-food style plates, where you will be asked "red or green" chile. You can try a mix of both red and green chile peppers by asking for your dish "Christmas". However, Santa Fe also has a number of excellent restaurants offering other cuisines -- possibly too many of them, in fact, as the highly competitive marketplace forces even some very good ones out of business before their time. It is almost impossible to overstate the dining possibilities here; they far outstrip those in most American cities ten times Santa Fe's size. As with several other New Mexico towns, restaurants in this description are broken into the sub-categories "New Mexican" which, note, is not the same as "Mexican" by any means and "Other." Meals exclusive of drinks and tips will usually cost $10/person or less at the "Budget" places, $10 to $25 at the "Mid-range" ones, and more -- sometimes much more -- at the "Splurges." Note that many Santa Fe restaurants are somewhat "casual" as regards business hours; if a place doesn't have hours listed below, inquire locally as to when it's open, as the hours may change erratically.
other
Santa Fe has plenty of standard chain restaurants Olive Garden, Outback, Red Lobster, etc., but why bother? There are enough excellent "local" ones that you can save your trips to these more ubiquitous eateries for cities less well-endowed from a culinary point of view. All restaurants below are uniquely Santa Fean in their character and cuisine.
new mexican
There are so many good New Mexican restaurants in town that a description here can barely scratch the surface. A note on red and green chile: half of the writers on New Mexican food claim that green chile is hotter than red, while half claim it's the other way around. In reality, the best authority on the spiciness of the chile at the particular restaurant you eat at is the restaurant itself, so if you're concerned about the chile being too hot, simply ask; you'll get a straight answer far more often than not. One thing that's definitely true, however, is that green tends to be fleshier than red, and adds a bit more substance to the dish, independent of the heat level.