I's a time of serious ups and downs in the local restaurant biz, brimming with both good and bad news. Do you want the bad news first? Fans of Koi restaurant, the local pan-Asian-cuisine Mecca on the third floor at 135 W. Palace Ave. (across from the old Palace Restaurant) will serve its final dinner on Saturday, April 16. Koi chef Joel Coleman, who previously wowed diners with his unique take on pan-Asian cuisine at the now-defunct Mauka, is heading west. Or maybe a little further east.

"It's been a long time coming," Coleman told The Fork by phone, "and the situation in that space was just not the best for me." Coleman, however, made the best of an awkward business situation, where he had control over the cuisine — but little else. "We built up some very devoted customers," he said, "and the food earned us a good reputation."

It certainly did. Koi is the only restaurant to garner a perfect "four chile" rating from Pasatiempo since 2008, when O'Keeffe Café earned the same rating, and accolades for Coleman's well-considered cuisine have poured in from plenty of other critics and diners.

A few weeks ago, Coleman made a journey to San Francisco, and he fell in love with the town. "After a short time there," he said, "I definitely got the feeling that that's where I belonged. I've been aching to get back to a larger city for some time now, and from a chef's point of view, there is just so much more at your disposal there. It's looking likely that San Francisco's where I'll end up, but there are some things possibly happening in Austin, Texas, that I may also take a look at." Coleman has family in the Santa Fe area and knows that he'll wind up back here eventually. "I love this place, and it's Santa Fe, where you never say never about not returning. It just feels right for me to go somewhere else, somewhere larger. This time, I'll probably be gone from here for a longer stretch of time, but I'll always come back for visits."

I'm going to miss chef Coleman, whom I consider one of Santa Fe's most talented young chefs of the past few years. And I'm also going to tremendously miss his kimchi pancakes and his Berkshire Kalua pork spring rolls with banana curry. Koi is open nightly for diner beginning at 5 p.m. through April 16. Call 955-0400 or visit http://www.koisantafe.com for reservations.


Speaking of the now-defunct Mauka restaurant: The New Mexican business reporter, Bob Quick, forwarded me an email recently announcing the opening of a new restaurant in Coleman's Mauka space (544 Agua Fría Street, Unit B, next to Ristra) on Friday, April 1. Rawal's Raaga Cuisine (say that 10 time fast with a mouthful of jellybeans) is the brainchild of Pramod Rawal, who has worked in the restaurant/hospitality business for more than two decades and opened Mumbai (http://www.mumbaicuisine.com), a fine-dining Indian restaurant in Lansing, Michigan. Raaga, a Sanskrit word that refers to color, melody, beauty, and hue, will offer Rawal's unique cuisine, a fusion of East Indian food and spices and foods from many other cultures. Sample dishes include ancho-amchur-crusted tandoori chicken and cumin-crusted sea bass served with cilantro salsa. Rawal, according to one of his Santa Fe friends who also knew him in Michigan, "is a real go-getter. His very first visit to Santa Fe was at the beginning of this year, and he's already ready to open his new restaurant here." Initially, Rawal's Raaga Cuisine will be closed on Mondays, at least until the restaurant's beer and wine license application is approved and the permits necessary to serve alcohol are in place. Hours of operation are lunch, from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, and dinner, from 5 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. On Fridays and Saturdays, dinner will be served until 10 p.m. To contact the restaurant and make reservations, call 820-6440. Soon, Rawal will also have his a website, http://www.raagacuisine.com, up-and-running. The Fork's favorite part about this good news? The restaurant also plans to deliver!


Also new to the Santa Fe area is CJ's Café (3810 N.M. 14, 820-6440) across from the Lone Butte General Store. The restaurant serves burgers and steaks and uses beef from New Mexico's own Bonanza Creek Ranch (http://www.bonanzacreekranch.com), which many folks usually associate with the movie business. You can also look forward to hand-cut fries and chips, deli sandwiches, regional specialties, soups, salads, daily specials, locally roasted coffee and free Wi-Fi. Hours are from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call 471-2925 for more information.


At 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 2, the Santa Fe Scottish Rite Center (463 Paseo De Peralta), hosts the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra & Chorus' second annual "Party of Parties" fundraising gala and dinner. The staff at Hotel Santa Fe will provide the evening's feast, which will include canapés (shrimp, scallop, ceviche, smoked salmon and asparagus); your choice of either pan-seared tuna with a wild mushroom risotto cake or porcini-crusted beef tenderloin with a syrah-cassis demiglace; seared duck breast salad with blackberry balsamic vinaigrette; chipotle shrimp with sweet potato puree and an assortment of breads. The evening will also include themed tables, auction, a raffle and live entertainment. Tickets are $150 per person (a portion is tax deductible). For more information visit http://www.santafesymphony.org/PartyofParties.html or call 983-3530 983-1414.

Contact Rob DeWalt at taste@sfnewmexican.com. or on twitter at twitter.com/sfnmTASTE.