Market Steer Steakhouse is in the St. Francis Hotel in downtown Santa Fe. It is a good sized room and has an additional entrance if you don’t want to cut through the hotel. The bare wood square tables are set with room to get between the large chairs and there are a couple booths along one wall. At the end of the room is a stone wall with a large mantle and fireplace. Windows to the street occupy 2 other sides of the room. The floor is a wide plank wood one and the noise level was fairly high. They had been open just over a year when we visited. They serve all prime beef that has been age 24 days and it looked to be a success, as it was busy. It’s interesting that 2 women run the place, Executive Chef and co-owner if Kathleen Crook and General Manage and co-owner is Kristina Goode. Everything is a la carte, so with your steak you can order separate sauces and all vegetables are by separate order. Service was helpful and friendly.
With some cocktails we looked over the menu. Bread service was warm slices of white bread served with a softened green chile butter. The bread was nicely doughy in the center.
green chile butter
We started with the Branding iron onion rings are served with a house made steak sauce and ketchup. They are literally served on an upsidedown branding iron. They are large with a really crispy coating.
Branding iron onion rings
A vegetarian option for an entree was Curried Cauliflower and it came with sticky coconut rice, haricot verts, coconut and ginger purée. It was large pieces of cauliflower with lots of sauce. It was tasty.
The Cowboy Ribeye was a 20 oz. portion that came with the bone. It was cooked rare as requested and had a good char to the exterior. The meat was juicy with good beefiness.
The New York Strip was a 14 oz. piece. It was also cooked as requested and was tender and juicy.
For an Enhancements sauce we tried the Peppercorn Demi. You really didn’t need it but it was fine. Boursin Creamed Spinach had tons of cheese on the top and worked into the sauce. It was good fresh spinach and if you like Boursin cheese you’d love it.
Green chile risotto was full of green chile flavor and came out nicely runny.
Truffle Fries were a real hit with the table. They came out nicely crisp and had deep truffle flavor. Some cheese had been grated on them that made them even more tasty.
The server told us that Chef Crook makes her own desserts. We had the Bourbon Bread Pudding with white chocolate, pecan and salted caramel. The server tried to find us a huge piece to split for 4 and he succeeded. It was a really moist bread pudding and had a wonderful caramel sauce on the side. For once there was enough of the tasty sauce to satisfy my sweet fix. It was an excellent steakhouse finish. I’d go back to try it again in a heartbeat.
