The Compound is surely one of the most illustrious watering holes on the Road.
Mark: We are a part of this community. We have people now who have come here before they had children, and now their children come and we have a martini with them. We’re part of the neighborhood. We’re the pub, a place to go. The Compound is more than a restaurant, especially what the point of being a barman I do, but you know, I’ve had some tough days in this house and I’ve never not wanted to walk in.
What’s a tough day for you?
Mark: A tough day is when you feel that your craft isn’t always maybe appreciated. And this is a craft, food, beverage, service. This is a life. This is your life. This isn’t a hobby for me. You’re either all in or you’re not. So when my wife Barbara and talks to our little daughter about how we’re a restaurant family and she’s just like, Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that dad isn’t going to be here on nights and weekends and holidays. So we have to support him in his efforts. We have another saying, you play with your toys, not with your food, because food provides everything in our world. So we respect the food.
How has the restaurant changed?
We’ve had different chefs, different general managers, the philosophy, and then the concept has never, ever changed since day one. We change the menu through the season, every 90 days, because one of the benefits of living here is there are four seasons. We do have spring, summer, winter, fall.
When I first came here, 1987, Coyote had just opened. And Mark Miller was the hottest thing, one of the hottest things in the country.
I was at the Arizona Biltmore, and John Macon was the chef and he was a friend of Mark Miller’s and he got a phone call from Mark. So, he calls me over and he goes, Well, he just wrote a new cookbook, the yellow one. And he’s looking to take it out on tour, but he needs somebody to run his restaurant. And two weeks later, I was flown out here, cooked for him. Did that from 1990 to 98.
The first time I came to the Compound with Mark, I sat right there, we were at a ten top and he’s like, We’re going to go to The Compound for Elizabeth Berry’s birthday. He goes, Oh, one thing, You gotta wear a jacket and a tie. I’m like, In Santa Fe?
We came here and there was Victor and you had to have reservations. There were no walk-ins, there was reservation only, there’s no children and there was coat and tie. Victor was non-negotiable. All of the architecture, as you saw, was different bancos, different chairs, hard brick floors that Tom Ford, who worked here as a busser, loved.
What is Canyon Road to you?
Mark: This is our Rodeo Drive of Santa Fe. I mean yeah there’s the Plaza, but more people want to be on this street.
It has more longevity than other places in town because most of those places are tied to people where this restaurant is tied to this street. This house was here hundreds of years ago. This was Alexander Gerrard’s house. This was the McComb home.
This was what a true compound was like: a Puebla where you come in and then there’s the animals and the livestock and the house and the food.
The Kornsteins live next door, and they’ve been here longer than I have. It’s their home and their gallery, Bellas Artes Gallery. And he is a cranky old man from New York, but just recently, he fell down, so he couldn’t come to dinner. And I’m like, let’s take it to him. Just go send it over. I said, if you need anything, come here. Just knock on the door, walk in the door, scream Mark, whatever you want. Anything he needs. I’m closer than 911. We’re here. We’re here for a lot of people.
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