La Choza: New Mexican Food by the Santa Fe Railyard

Name: Santa Fe Railyard
Address: Santa Fe, NM, US

In 1983 the Carswell family opened a second restaurant and named it, in Spanish, after the first one. La choza means the shed. The joke turned out better than intended, because the building they chose had effectively been one: the old adobe headquarters and bunkhouse of the Mercer Ranch, which ran stock on what was still grazing land at the edge of town. Two sheds, thirty years and two languages apart, one family, and one idea about chile. Santa Fe is a city that says most things twice, in two languages. The Carswells named their restaurants accordingly.

What La Choza Actually Cooks

Northern New Mexican food, in the family idiom that Courtney Carswell learned from his parents at The Shed before opening this place. Red and green, and the chile is the whole proposition. Carne adovada is what it is known for, pork held in red chile long enough to come apart. There is green chile stew, and posole, and blue corn enchiladas, and chile rellenos, and sopaipillas that arrive hot with honey to be opened and filled. The mocha cake is the same dessert the family serves across town, which is either laziness or conviction, and after forty years it reads as conviction.

In 2026, readers of the Santa Fe Reporter voted La Choza the best New Mexican restaurant in the city. The Shed finished in the top five, which the family presumably regards as a draw.

Where It Sits, and Why That Matters

This is the useful difference between the two, and it is worth understanding before you choose. The Shed is half a block off the Plaza, inside a Spanish Colonial compound, and it is where the city receives its visitors. La Choza is at the south tip of the Railyard Park, one block east of St. Francis Drive and one block north of Cerrillos Road, which is to say at the junction of the two most heavily driven roads in Santa Fe. It is where the city feeds itself. Same family, same tradition, opposite social function. You can learn more about how Santa Fe actually works by eating at both in one week than from most of what gets written about it.

The ground here has only been town for about a lifetime. When the Mercers built at the turn of the last century this was pasture, and it stayed grazing land into the middle of the twentieth century. The city then grew out and around the ranch house rather than the other way about. Old adobe walls in Santa Fe are not always standing where the old town stood, and this is a plain instance of it.

The Kind of Meal It Is

Loud, full, and unbothered. The decoration is painted and bright rather than restrained, the bar is a full one, and the margaritas are treated as part of the meal rather than as an accessory to it. For half the year the shaded patio is the entire point, and dogs are welcome on it. The clientele runs heavily local, which shows in small ways: people order without opening the menu, and nobody explains what posole is.

If you are only doing this once, The Shed is the more historic address and this is the easier evening, and the honest answer is to do both. Tomasita’s, in an old railroad building at the other end of the Railyard, is the third point of that triangle. Further out, Rancho de Chimayó cooks the same regional food up the high road. For the other conversation this city has lately started having about food, Leo’s cooks Thai and Malay in a converted garage. Green chile arrives in late September and the whole town smells of it for a fortnight; The Santa Fe Year covers what else the calendar does here.

Common Questions

Where do locals eat in Santa Fe?

La Choza, at 905 Alarid Street by the Railyard, is one of them. It sits a block east of St. Francis Drive and a block north of Cerrillos Road, at the junction of the two most heavily driven roads in Santa Fe, rather than off the Plaza.

Is La Choza related to The Shed?

Yes. Courtney Carswell, son of The Shed’s founders, opened La Choza in 1983 and named it after the family’s first restaurant: la choza is Spanish for the shed.