Santa Fe Restaurants Host Gourmet Dinner to Help Fund Guest Speakers at NMSU

Date: Dec. 2, 1997
Editor: D'Lyn Ford,  (505) 646-6528, dlford@nmsu.edu

LAS CRUCES -- Six Santa Fe restaurants are cooking up a plan to bring quality guest speakers to New Mexico State University's hotel, restaurant and tourism management (HRTM) department.

In honor of the late Gordon Heiss, a leader in the hotel and restaurant industry, NMSU's College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences is establishing a lectureship to bring industry experts into the classroom to speak with HRTM students and the public. The Santa Fe Restaurant Association is helping raise the necessary funds.

On Dec. 11 at the La Fonda restaurant in Santa Fe, six local restaurants will be featured at a fundraising culinary dinner. "Each restaurant will prepare one course of the meal," said Al Lucero, president of the Santa Fe Restaurant Association and owner of Maria's New Mexico Kitchen. "For example, one restaurant will prepare the entree, one will prepare the salads and one will prepare the desserts."

Restaurants scheduled to participate in the dinner include La Fonda, Santa Cafe, the Coyote Cafe, the Old House at the El Dorado, the Inn of the Anasazi and Las Companas Country Club.

Seating is limited to 250 people and the cost of admission is $100 per person. "This is really a bargain when you consider all the meal's courses and the expensive wines that will be served with each course," Lucero said.

"Heiss had been a board member of NMSU's hotel, restaurant and tourism management department since the program began in 1988," said Ron Cox, college professor in the department. "It was really his idea to set up an endowment for visiting speakers, so we decided to do this in his name."

Cox hopes to attract industry leaders that will speak on how they financed and expanded their companies and offer creative tips and ideas.

"We plan to host a major banquet every fall in Santa Fe to build the necessary funds for this lectureship," Cox said.

For more information about the dinner, call the HRTM department at (505) 646-5995.