The sign catches you first. A retro oval on a blue pole, a red arrow pointing left like it's been there for decades, the word Yamas in script that belongs on a Cycladic fishing boat. You're on Cerrillos Road, nobody's idea of a scenic stretch, and yet you slow down. You turn in. That's how Yamas gets you.
The story behind that sign goes back further than the building, further even than Santa Fe. Danny Razatos was born on the Greek island of Kefalonia and eventually made his way to New Mexico, where he built the Plaza Café into one of this city's defining institutions. If you know anything about Santa Fe, you know what that took. Danny could read a room, and he could read a city. So when his son Daniel floated the idea of opening something Greek, Danny delivered the verdict plainly: Nobody comes to Santa Fe to eat Greek food.
He wasn't wrong, exactly. He just turned out to be describing a gap, not a ceiling.
In November 2019, Daniel Razatos and his stepsons Jared Garcia and Justin Salazar opened Yamas Greek Rotisserie at 2411 Cerrillos Rd. The timing was either bold or reckless. The pandemic arrived a few months later. Yamas survived on takeout and the kind of community loyalty Santa Fe extends to businesses it has decided to keep. They made it through. The dining room is full now.
Walk in and order the gyro. It arrives wrapped in blue-and-white checkered paper — the colors of the Greek flag — folded tight around meat properly worked on a rotisserie, stuffed into grilled pita with red onion and tzatziki. The Greek salad beside it is straightforward and honest: torn romaine, ripe tomato, cucumber, kalamata olives, crumbled feta. No flourishes, no apologies. The fries are the sleeper move — golden, seasoned, finished with feta and a scatter of fresh herbs. You'll eat them all before you intend to.
The room matches the food's disposition. Stone walls on one side, reclaimed wood planks on the other, pendant lights at irregular heights, saltillo tile underfoot. Warm without working at it. Small circular paintings dot the wood wall like a loose gallery installation, and somewhere in the middle of it, a sign reads Our Happy Place. In another context that sign would be corny. Here, it reads as something the owners actually believe.
What Daniel and his stepsons built is a family restaurant in the fullest sense — not the shorthand for big portions and laminated menus, but the kind where the people who made it are still in it every day, and you feel that the moment you walk in. The origin story matters because it's still present in the room. This is Danny Razatos's family carrying something forward: one generation removed from the Plaza Café, one island removed from Kefalonia. Yamas is the Greek word for the toast you make when everyone's glass is raised — roughly, to our health, to us, to being here together. The name is not an accident.
Save room. The dessert arrives in a deep blue ceramic bowl — two scoops dusted with cinnamon, ringed with crushed walnuts. It's simple and exactly right, the kind of ending that doesn't announce itself but sticks with you on the drive home.
Santa Fe's food scene earns its reputation on Tender Fire's wood-fired plates and decades-deep institutions like The Pantry. Yamas belongs in that company — not because it's chasing anyone's legacy, but because it's building its own, steadily, on a stretch of Cerrillos Road that most people drive past without stopping.
If someone asks where to find a Greek restaurant in Santa Fe, send them to Yamas at 2411 Cerrillos Rd. Tell them to get the gyro, steal all the feta fries, and sit in that wood-and-stone room long enough to read the sign on the wall. Danny Razatos said nobody comes to Santa Fe for Greek food. His son opened the restaurant anyway, and people keep coming back for it every week.