At Wolf ‘n’ Swallow, a husband-and-wife team serves up ‘chaos cuisine’

Many businesses folded as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was through quarantine that early inspiration for a high-end but casual restaurant and wine bar concept took root for husband-and-wife duo Jennifer Jane and Ryan Houlihan.

The pair debuted the restaurant, dubbed Wolf ‘n’ Swallow, in Downtown Albuquerque in late August.

The restaurant serves what the owners describe as “chaos cuisine,” offering a wide selection of small plates and boards featuring pickled peanuts, deviled eggs, house-made potato chips, habanero smoked oysters and caviar, as well as charcuterie boards with house-made meats, cheese and olives.

“There’s no real boundary on how things are put together and how things can come together,” Houlihan, known as Chef Houla, said. “It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure kind of thing.”

The menu rotates regularly in response to the seasonal availability of ingredients that the business sources from farms and local businesses.

The owners curated the menu for wine pairing, Jane said. The bar features myriad wines from producers across the world, in addition to some handcrafted cocktails and artisanal brews.

The drink menu includes sustainable, natural wines, which Jane said use yeast indigenous to the areas where its fruits grow and with minimal intervention from pesticides and filtering the wine.

Jane, a wine connoisseur with several Wine & Spirit Education Trust certifications from the Napa Valley Wine Academy, first started learning about wine as an exchange student in France at 16 years old.

“I learned a lot when I was there, and it just kind of followed me for years,” Jane said. “I’m a full-time wine nerd at this point.”

Jane continued to explore the world of wine in New Mexico as a hairdresser in the film industry, even working on television shows like “Breaking Bad,” before moving to New Orleans, where she met Houlihan in 2012.

Houlihan was bartending at the time, establishing a presence in the city’s street and bar food scene. Houlihan grew up cooking, inspired by his grandmother’s 45-year bakery career, his father’s “adventurous” eating habits and a lot of free time. It wasn’t until he started working in hotels at age 14 that his interest in food went up a level.

“I just worked my way up slowly, worked at hotels and restaurants for a long time, worked under some really cool chefs and just taught myself a lot of it,” Houlihan said.

When the pandemic hit, Jane and Houlihan took advantage of a consumer-supported agriculture program, which allows people to pay a farm to receive boxes of routinely delivered produce.

“We would get these boxes and it’s just the two of us, and it would be like 30 turnips and all different kinds of tons of vegetables and fruit,” Jane said. “We were like, ‘OK, we can’t eat all of this.’”

That’s when the pair began experimenting with a variety of food preservation methods, including pickling, dehydrating, drying, curing and fermenting.

“It was like a mad scientist workshop in there and really trying to use everything from what we were getting,” Jane said. “Eventually, we kind of realized we were making charcuterie provisions without even really realizing it.”

The duo began sharing their creations at pop-ups outside of bars and in small cocktail lounges in New Orleans and continued at pop-ups in New Mexico when they returned to the state in 2021.

“When we moved back to New Mexico, we really started thinking about where we fit in the food and wine culture,” Jane said.

Houlihan added, “We always knew we wanted to build something, but it was just a matter of what and how.”

The two spent about six months workshopping ideas and exploring available spaces Downtown. It was through finding a 2,300-square-foot space at 414 Central SE that the pair’s vision became clear.

The historical building, built in the 1890s, came with enough space to offer both bar and restaurant seating, as well as historic charm from its long history housing restaurants, cafes and an artist studio, Houlihan said.

“We just knew this place was really special,” Jane said.

The couple signed a 10-year lease for the space in January 2024 and spent the last several months securing permitting and stripping everything but the floors to renovate the space with new electrical, HVAC, water lines, partition walls for the kitchen, a bar and a fresh front entrance and pavement.

The property also comes complete with a back courtyard that the owners plan to renovate and open next year, Jane said.

Jane said the community’s response to the business so far has been a “sweet” one, adding the surrounding neighborhood has been extra supportive.

Implementing the option for reservations has been frequently requested, Jane said, so the owners will be adding those soon, while also keeping the restaurant open for walk-ins.

Whether making a reservation for a $55 sit-down meal, making a pit stop for a quick $25 snack before a dinner reservation somewhere else or stopping in for a $10 charcuterie option for their furry four-legged pals, the owners said Wolf ‘n’ Swallow is open to all.

“The idea is to create an environment that makes wine and food elevated and approachable at the same time,” Jane said.

Houlihan added he wants people to feel “adventurous and inspired” when they dine at Wolf ‘n’ Swallow.

“It’s just about seeing people really enjoy themselves, create a memory and have a moment,” Houlihan said.