Longtime Santa Fe chef had 'huge and loving heart'

Sep. 22—Kim Kuuipo Muller, a longtime chef at Santa Fe restaurants who helped further the slow-food movement here, died earlier this month in California.

Her life partner, Alissa Marquis, said Muller, 67, died Sept. 9 from complications related to skin cancer.

"Kim had a huge loving heart and made friends everywhere she went. She was kind, loyal, fierce in her devotion to her craft and always showed the highest integrity in both her relationships and her food," Marquis said. "Her presence in the world nourished many people in many ways."

The couple moved to Santa Fe in 1994, where Muller fell in love with the city's food culture, with its local ingredients and flavors. Muller and Marquis returned to California in 2016 following the death of both of their mothers.

During her time in Santa Fe, Muller worked at several restaurants, including the Galisteo Inn, The Compound and Izanami — which garnered a James Beard Foundation nomination for best new restaurant.

Most recently, she took the lead in creating the menu for Opuntia.

Opuntia owner Todd Spitzer said Muller visited Santa Fe a few months ago to check in with the restaurant and had plans to return to help plan a new menu.

"That's going to be put on hold for a while," Spitzer said.

Muller's friend Mary Wolf, who co-owns the Collected Works Bookstore, recalled taking her son to visit Muller at the restaurant Real Food Nation on Old Las Vegas Highway.

"We were regulars there; she would always come out of the kitchen and get down on the floor with our child and play with him," Wolf said. "She would sit with him on her lap to read a book, and she just took time away from her work to just check in with people."

Before she arrived in Santa Fe, Muller worked as the executive chef at the South Street Seaport in New York City and the Border Grill and City restaurants in California.

Though she made waves in the culinary world, she remained humble, friends said.

"She didn't talk a lot about herself; she was a fairly private person who really spoke through her cooking rather than through her words," Wolf said. "... She took great pride in the ingredients that she chose for her cooking and knowing the farmers who grew the ingredients that she put into her meals."

Muller was diagnosed with malignant melanoma in 2021. Nearly a decade earlier, she had received a kidney transplant due to polycystic kidney disease, a genetic disorder.

Her donor was Julie Chambers, who didn't know Muller but learned about her need for a kidney through the United Church of Santa Fe. Chambers had recently put her name on a national donors list and wanted to do something to help someone in her own community, she said.

After months of testing, doctors confirmed Muller and Chambers were a match, and performed a successful transplant.

Even after her recovery and departure from Santa Fe, Muller kept in touch with the city's food scene.

"She was very inspirational," said Spitzer. "She has a beautiful heart, but very confident and very passionate about what she was doing and had incredible integrity behind it."