Santa Fean: It’s a Labor of Love at Paloma Restaurant
Seamless collaboration makes Paloma magical.
Marja Martin, who spent twenty years in the catering business, had no intention of owning a brick-and-mortar establishment before she opened Paloma in July 2017 at the corner of Guadalupe and Montezuma in Santa Fe’s Railyard District.
“I never even considered opening a restaurant until I met Chef Nathan Mayes,” she says. “I wasn’t sure if a restaurant would succeed, but I was sure that I wanted Nathan as a business partner if I was going to try it.”
Martin and Mayes got to know each other after they were hired as consultants to help a local company launch a new restaurant. Finding that they worked well together in a very stressful situation, they began talking about what they would do with a restaurant if they had an ideal situation of their own. After a year of searching for a space, they found the perfect one in the Railyard.