Pink Adobe to be sold to owners of neighboring Inn of the Five Graces
Dec. 18—The Pink Adobe and The Dragon Room, longtime downtown staples on Old Santa Fe Trail, are set for a six-week closure for remodeling and kitchen upgrades as well as a change in ownership.
Isabelle Koomoa, who has owned the establishments for nearly a decade, is preparing to sell them to Ira and Sylvia Seret, who own the neighboring Inn of the Five Graces on East De Vargas Street. The closure is scheduled Dec. 31, and the sale is expected to close Jan. 11, with a reopening planned just in time for Valentine's Day.
At age 81, Koomoa is ready to relinquish ownership, she said — but patrons need not fear major changes.
The Pink Adobe will remain The Pink Adobe.
"The really important thing to know is that the kitchen staff and bar staff will remain employed," Koomoa said. "The important thing is [the Serets] are not changing the concept and recipes."
Nor will they oust Koomoa from her kitchen.
"I still want to work," she said. "I am a saucier. I do the baking."
"The one thing I really want to get across is people are worried about what is going to happen," Koomoa said. "I want to reassure people nothing will change."
Asked for comment on the restaurant changing hands, Sylvia Seret wrote in a brief email the sale is not yet finalized and the couple are on vacation until mid-February.
Koomoa acquired The Pink Adobe in 2013 from the family that had opened it in the same location in 1944. The restaurant was acknowledged at the time as the oldest in Santa Fe to remain in the same family.
New Orleans native Rosalea Murphy, who started the restaurant, operated it until she died in 2000. Her daughter, Priscilla Hoback, and grandson, Joe Hoback, took over ownership but sold the business and property in 2007 to David Garrett and Wayland Hicks.
Three years later, Garrett and Hicks' company filed for bankruptcy protection, and Joe Hoback once again took it over until his sale to Koomoa.
Koomoa had lost her lease to the longtime home of the popular Guadalupe Cafe on Old Santa Fe Trail, just a couple of doors down from The Pink Adobe. The initial plan was to merge the two restaurants into "Guad by Day, Pink by Night," but that only lasted six months, Koomoa said.
She had operated the Guadalupe Cafe for nearly four decades, first on Guadalupe Street, where she opened it in 1975, and then at the Old Santa Fe Trail spot adjacent to the state Capitol. The move occurred in 1995.
When she purchased The Pink Adobe, Koomoa restored many of its original recipes that had fallen away over the decades and retained Murphy's New Orleans specialties: Steak Dunnigan, Poulet Marengo and Tournedos Bordelaise.
Ira and Sylvia Seret have been neighbors of The Pink Adobe since establishing their Inn of the Five Graces in 1994. In those nearly 30 years, they have become closer neighbors after piecing together properties on both sides of De Vargas Street.
The inn is a series of adobe and rock structures, some of which date to at least the 19th century, creating a real-life walk for guests through the historic Barrio de Analco, rebuilt after the Spanish reconquest of 1692.
Tourism publications such as Travel & Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler are fond of the Inn of the Five Graces, often listing it among the best hotels in New Mexico, the U.S. and even the world.
