Apothecary: oxygen bar and cacao coffee on the Plaza.

Apothecary, on the Plaza, is the unusual one in our breakfast list. Health-conscious food, an oxygen bar, and cacao coffee drinks — a combination that doesn't sound like it'll work on paper, and then you go and it does.

The thinking behind it makes more sense once you've spent a day in Santa Fe. The Plaza sits at 7,200 feet of elevation, and the high-desert air is drier than almost anywhere most of our guests come from. That combination — thin air, low humidity — does real work on your body the first 24 hours. Most people compensate by drinking more coffee, which is exactly the wrong move. Apothecary is built around the right one: hydrating drinks, food that doesn't sit heavy, and a few minutes on the oxygen bar before you walk back out into a Plaza day.

We send first-time visitors there on day one for that reason. If you arrived in town the night before, you slept poorly, and you've got a full day of walking and a hike ahead, this is the place to start. The cacao coffee drinks — using ceremonial cacao instead of the standard heavy cream-and-sugar lattes — give you the ritual without the crash that altitude amplifies.

It's also a useful spot mid-trip. After a day of green chili, margaritas, and slow dinners, an Apothecary breakfast is a reset. The bowls and toasts are clean without being austere. The juices actually taste like fruit. The room itself is small and a little gallery-like, which makes it the right place for a quiet morning when you want to read for an hour rather than chat.

A few practical notes. It's right on the Plaza, so parking is the same situation as anything else downtown — find one of the structures off the corners and walk. The oxygen bar is genuinely worth trying once, especially if you've felt the altitude. And on a longer trip, work this into a slow morning rather than a rushed one. It's not a quick-grab spot.

If you're putting together a Plaza morning, the natural pair is a stop at one of the galleries or shops afterward — Doodlet's is right around the corner if you're with kids, Nambé Store is a few minutes' walk, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is an easy walk if you want to fold a museum visit into the same morning.

This isn't the destination breakfast on your trip — Pasqual's is the one for that. But it's the one we send anyone to who wants to feel better, not heavier, on a Santa Fe morning. Worth the visit at least once on a longer trip, and worth knowing about even on a short one.