"Albuquerque, once considered the bland but necessary gateway to Santa Fe, has been gaining a reputation for food (and we don’t mean Los Pollos Hermanos). Much of that buzz emanates from Los Poblanos Historic Inn and Organic Farm, a small boutique property in the middle of a working organic farm and lavender fields just outside town. Jonathan Perno, executive chef at Campo, the inn’s restaurant, is a standout in the crowded field of Southwestern cuisine, perennially nominated for James Beard Foundation Awards. His menus reflect the season and the produce from the fields outside, as well as the treasures delivered from other farms and purveyors he’s cultivated relationships with in the Rio Grande River Valley. Regional items on the menu include blue corn from New Mexico pueblos, organic mountain lamb raised on native grasses, and an array of cheeses from Tucumcari. Campo, which operates in a converted dairy barn, feels simultaneously vintage and ultramodern: an open kitchen, high ceilings, large windows, beautiful at dinner service and at brunch. Los Poblanos itself is a historic ranch house with additions made in the 1930s by a wealthy family with the remarkable good sense to hire architect John Gaw Meem for the house and Rose Greely to design the gardens. Meem was responsible for popularizing the territorial revival style in the Southwest, employing architectural practices used in the region for centuries, with elements cribbed from the pueblos of Native Americans, the missions of Spanish padres, the more angular buildings of Anglo settlers, and a touch of classical Greek revival. The style (which now can be seen in bastardized ubiquity at every strip mall in New Mexico) is at its zenith at Los Poblanos, with wood-beam ceilings, slightly raked roofs instead of traditional flat pueblo roofs, and a central courtyard between porticos or portales. The property was a place of progress even from the 1930s, hiring WPA artists to create murals; opening a cultural center for conferences, concerts, and lectures; and undertaking radical experiments in farming. Guest accommodations are filled with handmade furniture, artwork, and serious charm. Meem rooms, in the main building, are decorated in the style of John Gaw Meem, with corner fireplaces and hand plastered walls. Farm rooms, with a design based on the dairy outbuildings, have wood floors, four-poster beds, fireplaces, and big windows. The newest additions, Field rooms, are situated out by the lavender fields and are also designed in the style of the dairy buildings. Guests can indulge in spa treatments (lavender in everything, of course), take bike rides and hikes, tour the fields and greenhouses, play bocce or swim, or take a fitness class in the on-site wellness yurt. Alternately, they can sit on their room’s portale and wait for the next meal." - Ann Shields
