Forty Nine Forty

The onion sets the line

An onion or a carrot is where Jonathan Perno, Executive Chef and Partner at Forty Nine Forty in Corrales, begins the work. He has described the job as drawing the best out of the product rather than forcing it into another shape, and that sentence fits the kitchen he has taken on here. Perno arrived at Forty Nine Forty in 2025, after leading the kitchen at Los Poblanos from 2015, with Rio Grande Valley Cuisine as the throughline rather than a borrowed idea for a new address.

At this station, the role is not only chef. Perno is also partner, which makes the line between menu, room, and long-term discipline harder to separate. His cooking stays close to New Mexico ingredients and to the growers and flavors that define the region. The restaurant frames the work as elevated American, but the more useful language is his own: local product, attention to place, and the patience to let an ingredient decide part of the method. He has returned to the kitchen in this capacity to keep exploring and sharing New Mexico flavors, and the room gives that work a quieter frame than a larger house would.

Rio Grande Valley Cuisine at the pass

The menu at Forty Nine Forty moves between a la carte cooking and a tasting menu, with Tuesdays and Wednesdays set aside for that longer form. The signatures give the kitchen its range: Chicken Confit Tacos, Burger 4940, Spaghetti and Meatballs. None of those names needs ornament. In Perno’s hands, the interest is in how a familiar form can carry regional product, careful seasoning, and restraint without losing its center.

The restaurant also keeps a curated wine program beside the food, not as a separate performance but as part of the table’s pace. The kitchen approach is modern, yet the discipline Perno brings is older than that word suggests. He follows what the ingredient gives. That can mean letting a vegetable stay plain enough to show its own sweetness, or keeping comfort in a dish while sharpening the cut, the sauce, or the pass.

A small room kept composed

The room at Forty Nine Forty is intimate, with a calm sophistication that suits a kitchen built on restraint. The dining format allows for two different tempos: a single plate chosen from the menu, or a tasting menu that asks the table to stay with the kitchen longer.

Outside, the patio softens the edge of the restaurant. Inside, the atmosphere stays composed, quiet enough for the details of a plate to register without ceremony. This is not a loud room built around spectacle. It is a place where the counter, the pass, and the table can remain in conversation, and where Perno’s Rio Grande Valley frame has space to breathe.

The work stays with New Mexico

Perno’s move to Forty Nine Forty did not pull him away from the foodways that shaped his cooking. It placed them in a new Corrales room, with partnership giving him a longer hand in how the restaurant grows. If the next chapter is visible anywhere, it is in the continued return to New Mexico ingredients and the quiet discipline behind a plate like Chicken Confit Tacos.