Church Street Cafe, Albuquerque

I had never been to Church Street Cafe before. Church Street Cafe is located behind San Felipe de Neri Church located right off the Old Town Plaza in Albuquerque.

I read up about this place because it had been years since I have walked around Old Town in Albuquerque. Because of parking issues, I always make targeted runs like going to the Candy Lady, which is also in the plaza area. As you can see from the front, I thought this place was small. It isn’t. It is a large space with a beautiful courtyard in the back. Who knew? Since we have been lucky to still have incredibly warm weather, we sat out back in the beautiful, large patio.

The Church Street Cafe was formerly Casa de Ruiz. According to the menu, Casa de Ruiz is one of the oldest houses in Albuquerque. This building is deceptive because from the front you would never know that this place is huge and has an incredible outdoor patio

Since there were 6 of us, and our hosts came early, they were able to secure a nice secluded area on the patio. We did have one visitor who seemed to check up on us.

We were greeted with chips and salsa before we made our final menu decisions. I choose the hand-made tamale plate.(17ish) that came with your choice of beans and rice or spinach along with a sopapilla for dessert. I chose the beans and the rice which was nicely cooked.

I had one tamale with salsa verde (green sauce and one tamale with rojo (red) sauce. Yes, I had Christmas with the red and green salsas. But as of late, I am ready starting to appreciate the red sauce more than I used to. The red sauce here had a little more punch or kick to it. There was a great deal of food on my plate. It was a very large portion. Good thing I was hungry.

I almost ordered the enchiladas good thing my better half did.

I thought that the spinach was a little over cooked but that could be just me. As you can see the enchiladas were also done in a Christmas sauce.

For dessert, a sopapilla with some honey really hit the spot.

I would suggest that you make reservations. This was a very busy restaurant. It was kind of pricey. I’m used to more humble places like K’ Bueno and Alicia’s or Posa’s. The beautiful patio was the place to be. Later that night, musicians started to serenade us. It was a lovely evening to be spending some quality time with friends outside.

Our server was very capable. She answered our questions and manged making serving 6 people look easy and effortless.

Church Street Cafe is located at 2111 Church Street NW Albuquerque. The phone number of the Church Street Cafe is (505) 247-8522.

Their hours are Tuesday& Wednesday 11am-9pm, Thursday-Saturday 8am-9pm and Sunday 8am-4pm