The Restaurant
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.
Executive chef Cristina Martinez took over the kitchen in the early 2020s and has rebuilt the menu around what she calls 'bold New Mexican' cooking — confidently regional without being parochial. Signature dishes include a queso fundido with wild Sangre de Cristo mushrooms and Oaxaca cheese in a sherry reduction; a lobster-kimchi risotto that has become the most photographed plate in Taos; a local bison filet with smoked-tomato jus; a green-chile-and-Hatch-corn polenta; and a lavender crème brûlée that closes most dinners. The wine list runs to roughly two hundred references with strong New World depth.
The room itself is the differentiator at this price point. The natural light during brunch and early-summer dinners is unmatched in town. Tables are deeply spaced — by far the most generous spacing of any serious Taos dining room — which makes the restaurant uniquely suited to private business conversation. Service is hotel-trained and discreet. For a Taos dinner that needs to operate at a higher polish than the in-town independents can comfortably deliver, De La Tierra is the answer.
Why This Is Taos’s Close a Deal Pick
For closing a deal in Taos, De La Tierra solves the problem of finding a serious business room in a small town. The wide spacing between tables — uncommon in northern New Mexico — gives the conversation cover. The dining-room scale and quiet hotel-trained service support a long, paced meal without rush. The loft library upstairs converts the table to private dining on twelve hours' notice. And the resort setting lets the guest finish the evening with a drink in the bar or a walk on the property's sacred-pond paths, extending the conversation past dessert without ever requiring a car.
Leave a Review
Registered members get published by default; guest reviews are moderated first.