A relative newcomer on the Santa Fe scene is the Indian restaurant, Raaga, owned by Paddy Rawal.  It's in a one-story arts-and-crafts style bungalow on Agua Fria street (a few blocks west of Sanbusco Center, where you can park if the restaurant's lot is full), that housed the excellent Asian-Pacific fusion restaurant Mauka a few years back.  (Mauka's chef, Joel Coleman, now heads an "Asian tapas" place, Koi, that gets good reviews---I haven't tried it.)  The old Mauka decor is still there, with the exception of some photos of India on the wall.  It's casual but reasonably elegant.

The food is some of the best in Santa Fe, of any type.  Food at Indian restaurants is often very oily and garlicky---which can be fun, but can be a bit much.  The food at Raaga does not have this problem---the lack of excessive oil gives a much clearer, cleaner impression on the palate, and there's plenty of flavor.  Much more like home-cooked Indian food.  The stuffed pepper appetizer was a hot green chile (the menu says it's a Poblano) with a filling of potatoes, peas, and spices that's standard for samosas, thinly covered with a cornmeal  batter and fried.  Delicious ($4.95).  The Chole Amritsari---chickpeas with a sauce featuring pomegranate, chiles, and ginger ($13.95), was superb.  Bombay fish masala curry, at $17.95, was also excellent.   Naan was topnotch as well.  Some of the best Indian food I've had in a restaurant, and the prices are quite nice for food of this quality.   Two appetizers and a split main dish would easily make a meal---the main dishes are quite large.

Let's hope that, unlike the equally excellent Mauka, Raaga makes a go of it at this location.  It's a bit off the main tourist and business streets, but it's a short and very pleasant stroll, full of Santa Fe atmosphere, from the busy Guadalupe street area down Agua Fria, so check it out.

Bergen

Was recently in Bergen Norway as part of the FQXi conference Setting Time Aright.  (I didn't know it had gone awry...).  Since Norway seems to be one of the world's most expensive travel destinations, I figured I would take full advantage of the hotel breakfast, skip lunch, and have dinner at a really good restaurant---most restaurants in town are nearly as expensive as a really good one anyway.

Hanne på Høyden, Bergen, Norway

Hanne på Høyden turned out to be one of the best places I have ever eaten.  They tend toward Norwegian, and local, ingredients where possible.  Nice, casually elegant location in the former Brun bakery.  (Frederick Brun is gone, but his business now has branches in various parts of Bergen---just not the original building.  Prices deterred me from sampling.)  A large, high-ceilinged room with plenty of windows on the street holds most of the diners; a half-level higher, but open to the main room, is a small bar with counter looking toward the kitchen, and a couple of high tables, and also a cool, semiprivate room, with photos of Brun and the building in its old incarnation as bakery, on the walls.  I ate at one of the high tables in the bar area (probably lucky to get the chance without a reservation).

The complimentary amuse-bouche was a mousse of creme fraiche and crabmeat topped with a little herring roe.  Light and airy and flavorful, the herring roe a perfect intensely flavored salty complement to the crabmeat.  Perfection.  Rye bread with local butter was a perfect accompaniment to this and the rest of the meal.  The house-made wheat beer was slightly floral, not as sweet or alcoholic as some wheat beers can be--very refreshing and tasty.

Starter was a cold tomato and raspberry soup, described by the waitress as like a gazpacho.  Which indeed it was---a light, somewhat foamy gazpacho, very intensely flavored, with some herbs that looked like very tiny and tender parsley, shavings of parmesan, and ripe raspberries and half cherry tomatoes sprinkled on top.   Raspberry and perfectly ripe, sweet tomato turn out to be an inspired pairing.  The soup tasted like there was an intense olive oil swirled in, but also something minty that perfected the flavor combination---it turned out to be not olive oil, but birch oil.  This was as good a dish as I've eaten anywhere.

The main course was "Fjordfe med grønnkål og ramsløksaus", which I  understood to translate as "Fjord beef"---a relatively rare kind of cattle raised in pastures by the fjords of Norway's west coast---with green kale and wild fennel sauce.  I think it is "Fjordfe" in Norwegian.  It was superb---cooked medium rare, just as I asked, it did not have a red-meaty taste at all, but was rather mild and nutty, sliced into pieces in a delicious sauce of cream, wild fennel, and "Viking garlic", which I take to be some local wild tuber.  I'd ordered a glass of Tuscan Sangiovese to go with the beef, but it turned out the wheat beer was a perfect pairing---without the red-meaty taste, red wine was unnecessary (although it was a tasty enough glass).  The roasted small potatoes accompanying the dish were superb, though perhaps the salt encrusting them was a bit much.  Another great dish.

Dessert was "Sesongens bær på fløtepudding", a half-inch layer of a pudding (somewhat like a thick, smooth creme anglaise) generously studded with seasonal berries: blueberries, raspberries, fat, ripe gooseberries, red and black currants, possibly some melon if my memory isn't confusing me, all perfectly ripe and tasty.  Simple but perfect---a fabulous end to a fabulous meal.   Well, not quite the end---a glass of intense house-made raspberry liqueur was the finishing touch.

Not cheap but worth it---a truly memorable meal, one of the best restaurant meals I've ever had.  Michelin doesn't seem to have paid much attention to Norway (I think there are five restaurants it has starred, all in Oslo)---but Hanne på Høyden is obviously the kind of restaurant that deserves a star--or two.

Another home run hit by the Perimeter Institute Bistro's crack team of chefs.  A not exactly Kosher lunch, last Tues. or Thurs.:  milk-braised pork with ricotta gnocchi.   Deeply flavored, tender, savory pork.  The milk wasn't really identifiable as such but must have contributed to the tenderness, and maybe in some way to the intensely flavored bit of concentrated jus (that's, like, Français for juice) that coated the little bits of slightly spicy, slightly bitter greens and the delicious ricotta gnocchi.  A few bits of purple watercress, or sorrel or something, provided another perfect garnish.  Made me feel like I was staying in a nice Italian farmhouse someplace in, maybe, Emilia, or perhaps eating on the patio of a really good trattoria.  So maybe I should have said "sugo" instead of "jus".  In any case...Bravo!!!

Perimeter's bistro is amazing.  The rice-wrapped seabass with Puy lentils I had yesterday at lunch was perfection.  Nice, thick piece of fish, cooked perfectly.  Flaky.  Firm. Moist. Flavorful.  Swathed in a rice wrapper and lightly browned, ending up covered in a crisp, savory golden sheath.  Thin slivers of red and yellow peppers and suchlike veggies encased with the fish.  The whole atop a generous bed of tiny, dark, earthy, intense Puy lentils, larded with and accompanied by more bits and slivers of veggies---carrot, more peppers, and so on.   A drizzle of excellent olive oil.  Karla, Steve, Frank, and the rest of the chefs and kitchen staff at PI get a big salute, or in Japanese style, a deep bow of acknowledgment, for this and many other unfussy but elegant, intense, and satisfying creations.  Food like this relaxes and rejuvenates mind and body.  I think we all work better---prove better theorems, achieve better philosophical insights, find more efficient ways to make the institute run or keep the building in good shape, and so forth, after a meal like this.  Not that that's the point---like a piece of music, a painting, or a good theorem, such a dish is its own best reason for being.