Santa Fe, NMChili

Horseman's Haven Café is a diner on Cerrillos Road where people come for the green chile, a pale, notoriously hot sauce with a reputation as a sinus-opener, and regulars settle in for their chile fix. Order a plate smothered in the green.

Atrisco Café & Bar is a Northern New Mexican restaurant in the DeVargas Center whose red and green chile come from the lower Río Grande valley, and tourists and locals alike come for its traditional chile dishes. The heat of the green varies with the chiles, sometimes moderate by Santa Fe standards and sometimes a real nose-runner. Order the Relleno Bueno plate, a single relleno under green chile with posole and beans.

Casa Chimayo is a New Mexican house on Water Street downtown, bought in 2023 by Benina and Joaquin Quintana, with Joaquin cooking and folding touches of his Diné heritage into the menu. Its green chile stew comes packed with pork and sinus-busting green chile, with avocado and a whole fresh sopaipilla alongside, and the carne adovada goes inside rolled blue corn enchiladas bursting with red chile. Order the green chile stew, or the enchiladas with carne adovada.

Tesuque Village Market is a country store and restaurant in Tesuque village whose green chile stew is cooked low and slow into a muddy, gravy-like bowl with large pieces of tender pork, potatoes and carrots, big on flavor without an overbearing heat. It makes a good first bowl for someone new to green chile. Order the green chile stew, which comes with a flour tortilla.

Café Pasqual's is chef-owner Katharine Kagel's downtown café, and its bowl of red comes at breakfast: a generous pour of deep purple-brown red chile flooding griddled polenta flecked with green chile, sautéed chorizo and corn, with eggs whose yolks spill into the sauce. It is red chile without the usual burrito or enchilada underneath. Order the griddled polenta and chorizo at breakfast.