Bubbly and bites: Bosque Brewing Company to open brunch venue Smothered in spring

Bosque Brewing Company is expanding its brand with a brunch spot named Smothered.

The brunch venue is tentatively expected to open in March. It will be located on Central Avenue, near Old Town, in a space that formerly housed the restaurant, Vinaigrette, which last year relocated to a nearby space.

“We’ve been kind of kicking around this idea of wanting to do a brunch restaurant for the last several years, and now that the laws have changed in New Mexico allowing us to sell cocktails and that sort of thing earlier in the day, it finally made sense for us to go ahead and really try to bring that concept to fruition,” said Jotham Michnovicz, co-owner and chief development officer at Bosque Brewing Company. “And at the same time, the space on Central where the old Vinaigrette used to be opened up. We’ve gotten a call about it, and it was like, ‘Oh, this is perfect.’ So it just kind of fell in our lap.”

Bosque wants to be creative with the menu for Smothered and also offer some New Mexican favorites and brunch staples.

“We want to have some classic breakfast dishes, things like a two egg breakfast and then stuff that’s normal for New Mexico,” Michnovicz said. “We’ve got a breakfast burrito. We’ve got some Southwestern style inspiration. We wanted to have fun.”

The menu will feature an eggplant caponata on toast with burrata, honey and pistachios. A “fun play” on chilaquiles will be another offering.

“We did pickled golden beet chilaquiles with a strawberry ranchero, like sweet and savory sauce, and some goat cheese and pepitas,” Michnovicz said. “So that’s going to be really fun. We want to just kind of play around with the menu a little bit. We wanted to have some classic dishes but reimagined a little bit.”

Smothered will be less beer centered and more cocktail driven.

“The beverages we’re going to be focusing on a lot are brunch-style cocktails,” Michnovicz said. “Our food and beverage manager has put together a really nice cocktail list. We’ll have some beers. We’re not going to be very beer heavy on this concept, it’s really going to be a little more cocktail focused, and we’ll have wines and mimosas and that kind of stuff.”

Smothered will offer a lively atmosphere.

“We’re going to have a really colorful and bright interior,” Michnovicz said. “The tile beneath the bar is red, and then there’s a green glass tile that goes behind the bar, and we’ve got some really cool orange lights. It’s got this really fun and vibrant, kind of colorful interior.”

Guests will have access to a self-service coffee bar to enjoy while they wait to be seated.

“There’s a patio on the east side of the building that’s really going to be kind of reserved just for people to hang out and drink their coffee while they’re waiting for their table to be ready,” Michnovicz said.

Smothered is one of 14 properties that Bosque owns or oversees in Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe. It recently began overseeing operations at Sobremesa Restaurant & Brewery.

“We’re just gonna manage and run it, and eventually we’ll purchase it as well,” Michnovicz said. “But right now, we’re just running it for them, but it will become one of our brands before too much longer.”