Joe's Tequila Bar: what to do when you didn't book anything.

Every version of our Santa Fe guide has opened the dinner section with the same warning: this is a reservation town, book weeks out. That's true and we stand by it. It's also true that on a seven-day trip there will be two nights nobody planned, and those nights need an answer. Harry's Roadhouse is still that answer out by the houses. Joe's is the one downtown.

It's the bar and restaurant at Inn on the Alameda, on East Alameda where Canyon Road lets out. You can walk to it from the Plaza. You can definitely walk to it from a gallery crawl.

The patio is the reason to go. The inn is built around courtyards, so you're eating outside in a walled garden rather than on a sidewalk, and when the last light comes over the wall and turns everything gold, it's one of the better places in town to be sitting down with a drink. In cooler months the bar itself is the move — dark wood, leather-strap stools, a back wall of bottles lit from behind.

The nachos are the order. That's an unglamorous thing to lead with in a town full of chefs, and we're leading with it anyway, because they're genuinely good and because after a long hike that's what everybody actually wants. The kitchen's own headliners are the red chile roasted chicken, the chipotle shrimp, and the carne asada, and they hold up. It leans Mexican and Central American rather than New Mexican, which is a useful change of pace by day four of green chile.

The tequila list is real: over 250 tequilas, mezcals, and sotols, plus flights if you want to taste across them, and margaritas built on fresh-squeezed lime. Order a flight, split it, and let somebody talk you through the difference between a blanco and an añejo. That's a pleasant hour.

Practical notes. 303 East Alameda, open daily 11:30 to nine. We've never needed a reservation, but they do take them through the inn at (505) 946-0525, so call ahead for a big group or a holiday week. Parking is tight on Alameda; the lot fills, and the side streets are usually easier.

Pair it with: Canyon Road in the late afternoon, gallery by gallery, then walk down the hill and land here. No reservation, no plan, and it's the best hour of the day.