Jan. 14 -- In describing her decision to exit the Santa Fe restaurant business last week after more than four decades, Dee Rusanowski opted for a decidedly unsentimental approach.
"Don't you think it's time?" she asked. "At [age] 86, I think it's time. We're lucky to be going out standing up."
That matter-of-fact answer reflected the practical sensibilities of a woman well accustomed to the demands of feeding the public for most of the last half-century. Along with her husband, Bernie, Rusanowski has owned and operated two well-known local eateries since moving to Santa Fe from California in 1975.
First, there was Dee's Restaurant, which was on Washington Avenue north of the Plaza for 23 years, closing in 1998. Then, after a multiyear hiatus in which the couple focused on volunteer work, the Rusanowskis opened their next venture, Saveur Bistro Santa Fe, at 204 Montezuma Ave., in early 2003.
Their tenure there ended Friday, as Saveur closed permanently at the end of the day. Rusanowski said a new landlord offered to buy her out of her lease, an offer to which she and her husband were agreeable.
"We were happy to go," she said. "It was just something that had to happen."
Rusanowski's apparent lack of interest in dwelling on the end of her Saveur run doesn't mean she doesn't take considerable pride in her long career as a restaurateur. Dee's was famous for its hand-held breakfast burritos and its fresh donuts, while Saveur's lineup of breakfast and lunch fare ran the gamut from traditional New Mexican favorites to hot sandwiches, crepes, rib-eye steak, soups and salads, and all manner of baked goods.
"All our food was organic," Rusanowski said. "We paid extra to make sure people ate healthy."
That made the eatery a favorite not only of public employees who worked in state office buildings just to the east of Saveur, but especially the lawyers, bailiffs, staff members, judges and even jurors at the state's First Judicial District Court just across the street on Montezuma Avenue, Rusanowski said.
In fact, she said, it wasn't unusual to see some of them come in for breakfast and lunch the same day.
"We were very blessed to have a lot of loyal customers," she said.
Rusanowski had a personal relationship with many of those folks, greeting them warmly every time they came in and seemingly seizing any opportunity to make a new friend.
"I'm a people person," she said. "I loved meeting people from all over the world. We had really loyal customers from Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Española -- it was fun to see them often."
That reflected Rusanowski's business philosophy -- give people a place where they feel like they are well taken care of, she said, and they'll be happy to return there year after year.
"When you like people, it's not work -- it's fun," she said. "You're making a new friend every day."
In 2022, Rusanowski claimed to have invented the hand-held burrito, a comment that sparked backlash and discussion.
Gregory McNamee, author of Tortillas, Tiswin and T-Bones: A Food History of the Southwest, wrote in an email at the time that Rusanowski may have been the first person in Santa Fe to offer hand-held breakfast burritos, the habit of eating a burrito by hand dates to at least the 19th century when the item was "carried by burros (whence the name) at worksites in Mexico as a convenient, portable meal."
"Since they were sold at all times of day and since, for obvious reasons, they wouldn't have been smothered," he wrote, suggesting the invention of hand-held breakfast burritos probably predated Rusanowski's claim.
Rusanowski has no plans to kick back in retirement, as she said she already has been recruited to join various neighborhood walking and exercise groups.
"They said, 'Don't think you're going to sit down and put your feet up and watch TV,' " Rusanowski said her neighbors told her.
There was little rest for the Rusanowskis during their first retirement, she said, recalling how they found themselves volunteering on behalf of the Lensic Performing Arts Center and what is now Solace Sexual Assault Services, often working eight to 10 hours a day.
Maintaining that kind of pace prompted her husband to put his foot down after just a few years and demand they open another restaurant.
"Bernie said, 'If I'm going to work this hard, I'm going to get paid for it,' " she said, laughing.
Rusanowski agreed to her husband's ultimatum, but she added some conditions -- she wouldn't work nights or weekends, and the couple would spend one month a year traveling, leaving the eatery temporarily in the hands of their three sons, one of whom, Ken, is a Santa Fe periodontist.
That arrangement satisfied them both for the next 22 years, she said.
"Wherever our crazy head would take us, that's where we'd go," she said.
Rusanowski said more travel is likely in her future now that she's not tied to a business anymore. But she doubts she and Bernie will be quite as busy in their second retirement as they were in their first.
"At our age, we're not as quick running up the steps," she said.