NM Junior Foodies Review: Sawmill Market Winter Experience

Submitted by Carol A. Clark
on November 29, 2025
- 11:50 am

Come tour the Winter Market with us! Photo by Rebecca Rutherford

Outdoor space at Sawmill Market all decorated for the holidays. Photo by Rebecca Rutherford

By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
For NM Junior Foodies

Heritage Hotels and Resorts announces the second annual Sawmill Winter Experience, running from Nov. 28 to Dec. 31, at Albuquerque’s bustling food hall, Sawmill Market.

This indoor and outdoor winter celebration is unlike anything else in New Mexico and brings an immersive holiday wonderland to the Southwest, complete with seasonal food and beverage offerings, enchanting decorations, visits with Santa, family photo opportunities, and live music and dance performances.

Guests can also enjoy Sawmill Market’s newest cocktail experience, The Old Fashioned, which offers a welcoming space to toast the festive season with family and friends.

Heritage Hotels and Resorts, a New Mexico-owned company, is expanding its partnership with the Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation for this year’s event. The foundation is bringing its annual Festival of Trees to the Sawmill Winter Experience. This year, 60 expertly decorated trees will be displayed throughout the experience. Each tree includes a QR code for bidding, and all proceeds support New Mexico children with medical needs. The expanded partnership was inspired after the foundation had a trailer of essential medical equipment stolen, prompting Heritage and Sawmill to step in and assist.

The Sawmill Winter Experience also features activities for children, including ornament decorating, visits with Santa, and the chance to write letters to Santa, and a North Pole mailbox for sending them.

Families can explore Sawmill’s transformed winter forest, complete with fire pits, Santa’s Village, pictures with Santa, and holiday-themed installations. Additional programming can be found on sawmillmarket.com, including live entertainment, a cookie decorating workshop, a kid friendly scavenger hunt, and a family friendly New Year’s Eve celebration Dec. 31.

Visitors can enjoy the Winter Experience at no cost and can also attend the Artisan Market, which runs from Nov. 28 through Nov. 30 and features local New Mexico artists. Tickets for the Artisan Market are $15.

We had a great time touring the experience! We spent the night at Hotel Albuquerque, right across the street from Sawmill Market and centrally located near many Albuquerque attractions.

Our stay was fabulous, and it was wonderful being able to just walk to Sawmill and around Old Town.

There are so many cool places to eat in Sawmill! We had a hard time deciding, but my son decided on Frenchie’s – a place that specializes in French dips and tater tots. He got the truffle dip with a side of tots, and everything was perfect. The tots were super crispy, and the truffle taste was delicate and not overwhelming. It was packed with tasty roast beef, and the au jus was spot on.

Highly recommend a visit to this, it’s one of Chef Dakota Weiss’s! She is amazing and heads Coyote Cafe as well as Capital Coal in Santa Fe, she is an incredibly talented chef.

I don’t get sushi a lot and I love it, so I went to Hiro’s and got a chef’s special roll, yellowtail with green chile, crab, avocado and cucumber in special sauce. The fish was incredibly fresh and the chile was very spicy and flavorful! Great roll, I loved it.

We got dessert at Neko Neko, Japanese for Cat Cat, serving up Taiyaki, a Japanese fish-shaped cake, filled with soft-serve ice cream and topped with sweet treats. My son topped his with sweetened condensed milk and got pandan flavor. Delicious!

The experience was truly magical, with amazing and immersive experiences the entire family can enjoy. I highly recommend checking them out this holiday season when you are in Albuquerque, and if you can make a weekend of it and stay at Hotel Albuquerque, or its sister hotel, Hotel Chaco, even better!

Here is a list of all merchants at Sawmill Market: