United States — New Mexico

Taos — High Desert Dining at 7,000 Feet

Taos cooks at the intersection of three cultures and one altitude. Lambert's has anchored the contemporary American canon since 1989. The Love Apple converts an 1860s adobe chapel into the country's most romantic Northern New Mexican kitchen. Medley pulls farm tables onto a high-desert porch. The town has fewer than six thousand people and the dining ambition of a city ten times its size.

60+Independent Restaurants
5Editor Picks
7,000Feet of Altitude

Taos’s Greatest Tables

5 restaurants listed

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$ under $40  ·  $$ $40–$80  ·  $$$ $80–$150  ·  $$$$ $150+ per person

Lambert's of Taos Taos Contemporary American restaurant
1
Impress Clients
Bent Street — Taos
Lambert's of Taos
Contemporary American$$$
Taos's contemporary American flagship since 1989. Family-owned, white-linen, and the most reliable serious dinner in town.
The Love Apple Taos Northern New Mexican restaurant
2
Proposal
Paseo del Pueblo Norte — Taos
The Love Apple
Northern New Mexican$$$
An 1860s adobe chapel converted into twelve tables of candle-lit Northern New Mexican cooking. The country's most romantic Southwestern room, full stop.
Medley Taos Modern American restaurant
3
Birthday
El Prado / Arroyo Seco Road — Taos
Medley
Modern American$$$
Chef-and-pastry-chef-owned. A rustic-chic roadhouse on the way to Taos Ski Valley, with the best dessert list in northern New Mexico.
Doc Martin's Taos New American / Southwestern restaurant
4
First Date
Historic Taos Inn — Taos
Doc Martin's
New American / Southwestern$$$
The dining room of the Historic Taos Inn — a hundred-year-old fireplace, the town's deepest wine cellar, and the most layered atmosphere of any restaurant in Taos.
De La Tierra Taos Bold New Mexican / Global restaurant
5
Close a Deal
Kit Carson Road / El Monte Sagrado — Taos
De La Tierra
Bold New Mexican / Global$$$$
The dining room of El Monte Sagrado resort. High-ceilinged, full-windowed, and the most polished business table in Taos.

Best for First Date in Taos

Best for Business Dinner in Taos

The Top 5 Taos Restaurants

01

Lambert's of Taos

Editor PickContemporary American$$$123 Bent St, Taos

Lambert's of Taos has occupied a converted Bent Street adobe since 1989, when Zeke Lambert opened what was then the town's first contemporary American kitchen. Three and a half decades later the restaurant is in its second generation under the family, and Bent Street itself has filled in around it with galleries and small specialty shops — but Lambert's still reads as the senior address. The main dining room seats around fifty across two linked spaces, all linen tablecloths and low lighting, with a smaller patio that opens in summer and a sharper, more casual Treehouse Bar one floor up.

02

The Love Apple

Editor Pick — RomanticNorthern New Mexican$$$803 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, Taos

The Love Apple occupies a small adobe chapel built in the 1860s on the north end of Paseo del Pueblo, the road that runs from the Plaza out toward the Pueblo. The building is preserved more than decorated: the original viga ceiling, hand-troweled mud walls, candles set into the wall niches that were once altars. There are twelve tables. The room operates on a single shift each evening from Wednesday through Sunday — a deliberate constraint that allows the kitchen to source from local producers most other restaurants cannot use at scale.

03

Medley

Editor PickModern American$$$100 State Rd 150, Taos

Medley sits at the bend where State Road 150 leaves El Prado and starts climbing toward Arroyo Seco and the ski valley, a five-minute drive from the Taos Plaza. The building reads as a high-desert roadhouse — low-slung pine-and-adobe, a small front porch, a wine shop attached to the dining-room wall that doubles as the restaurant's storeroom. Inside, around forty-eight covers across two rooms with hammered-copper lighting and a long communal table that anchors the back space.

04

Doc Martin's

Historic LandmarkNew American / Southwestern$$$125 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, Taos

Doc Martin's is the restaurant inside the Historic Taos Inn, the central building of which is the original home of Dr. Thomas Paul Martin, Taos County's first physician, built in the late nineteenth century. The dining room opens off the Inn's famous adobe lobby with its two-storey kiva fireplace; the room itself runs across what were once Dr. Martin's house, examination room, and waiting parlour, now a single sprawling space of around eighty covers with a low viga ceiling, white-stuccoed walls, and original heavy wooden doors.

05

De La Tierra

Resort Fine DiningBold New Mexican / Global$$$$317 Kit Carson Rd, Taos

De La Tierra is the principal dining room of El Monte Sagrado, the Heritage Hotels resort that occupies a fourteen-acre property a five-minute walk east of the Taos Plaza on historic Kit Carson Road. The dining room is the architectural centrepiece of the property: a soaring forty-foot ceiling supported by hand-hewn vigas, a wall of windows opening onto the sacred pond and waterfall garden, and a small loft library above the main room that can be reserved for private dinners of up to twelve. Eighty covers in the main room, twelve in the loft.

Dining in Taos

The insider’s guide to Taos’s table