Hotel Willa opened to the public in May, the newest addition to Casetta’s portfolio of revitalized hotels. It replaces the Indian Hills Inn, a 1940s-era, adobe-style motor lodge that fell into disrepair and was condemned by the Town of Taos Council in 2017. Casetta purchased the blighted property in 2019 and began to reimagine the space with the help of a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant secured through the town.

Today, the 50-room boutique hotel boasts an art gallery, fitness center, bar and restaurant, retail store, pool, dry sauna and cold plunge, fire pits and an outdoor terrace for events.

“We like to say that Hotel Willa is our love letter to Taos,” said Santiago LaRoche, Hotel Willa’s general manager. “We were really lucky to be able to bring this place back to life.”

Hotel Willa offers guests standard-, queen- and king-sized suites. Each room is a nod to traditional adobe-style architecture with arched doorways, earth-toned walls and linens dyed in the colors of Taos’ high-desert landscape.

Some rooms come with kiva-style fireplaces. Others spill out onto private patios with views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. They feature local art from watercolors and pottery to brooms and bear fetishes from Taos Pueblo.

Bathrooms are stocked with Parachute Home linens and Aesop bath products infused with frankincense, bergamot rind and cedar atlas.

“Part of our biggest mission was finding a balance between what I’d say is a new, modern concept and keeping what you call original New Mexican architecture,” LaRoche said. “I feel like some hotels make this effort and over-push it with turquoise everywhere. These are accents that you put in every single room that makes you feel that Southwestern touch.”

Hotel Willa currently has about 25 to 30 percent vacancy on weekdays, LaRoche said. This past Memorial Day, the hotel was fully booked.

“So far, I think it’s probably one of the properties that I have fallen in love with the most, but I think it’s because we got to see it from scratch,” said LaRoche, who worked for three years as a general manager for another of Casetta’s hotels. “That’s kind of different. We used to walk this property and just see dirt. We’d ask, ‘What are we going to do with this?’”

He added, “When you see something come back from the ashes and into such a nice product, you get to share that joy and excitement for the place. It's very, very rewarding.” 

Local artwork is interspersed throughout the hotel and The Paseo Project’s Artist in Residence program brings rotating artists to live on-site.

A rosy crystalline mural titled “Bullet Cities” seems to bud from the art gallery’s back wall. Taos artist Debbie Long collected bullet casings on hikes around New Mexico, then cast them into molds of poured glass.

The art gallery also features pieces by Paulina Ho, Dean Pulver, Mark Kemper, Sean Ratliff, Afton Love and Johnny Ortiz-Concha, among others.

Flickering candlelight softened the edges of Hotel Willa’s dining venue, Juliette, Thursday evening (June 12), as a server set down one of their most popular dishes: a Juliette burger with green chile, cheddar and caramelized onions.

The thick, juicy patty comes paired with beef fat fried potatoes and citrus aioli. The meat is sourced from SweetGrass Co-op, a collaborative of family-owned ranches in Colorado and New Mexico.

“It’s freshly ground every single day, which makes a huge difference in terms of the quality,” said Julia Vaive, restaurant manager. “Not a lot of places do that anymore, so it’s super bright, pink and beautiful meat with very simple ingredients that’s super juicy. We get the buns from Michael’s Kitchen.”

Juliette’s menu offers a little bit of everything. There’s smoked trout with cultured cream and black radish, fresh cheese dumplings with oyster mushrooms and turnips, and roast chicken thighs with Meyer lemon and chickpea. 

On the desert menu: pistachio ice cream, rhubarb sorbet, chocolate cream puff, and a cold milk custard with bee pollen, piñon honey and vinegar.

Juliette’s concept and menu was designed by Johnny Ortiz-Concha and Maida Branch of Siempre Design. The menu is seasonally driven with local ingredients, including produce from an on-site edible garden.

Juliette is named in honor of Ortiz-Concha’s mother, who lived near Hotel Willa on Montoya Street for the majority of her life. Ortiz-Concha hopes to create a dining venue where both Taoseños and tourists feel welcome.

“Opening Juliette is deeply personal for me — it’s a way of honoring the land, my ancestors, and especially my mother, whose warmth and strength inspired so much of what we’ve created here,” Ortiz-Concha said in a press release. “Every dish reflects the soul of Northern New Mexico — its bold flavors, its history and the generosity of its people. We wanted to build more than a restaurant, we wanted to create a space where community is nourished, stories are shared, and the spirit of Taos lives on through great food and drink.”

Vaive echoed that sentiment.

“We’d consider ourselves more casual-fine dining in a sense,” Vaive said. “We have Coke as an option and we have a Budweiser on draft. It’s nice we can provide a higher quality, then also meet everyone else who wants a familiar thing like the Budweiser.”

Noah Pettus, Hotel Willa’s executive chef, has cooked in restaurants around Taos and beyond, including 192 at The Blake in Taos Ski Valley. He said he enjoys the menu’s mixture of simple, high-quality dishes.

“It’s nice to cook food that’s simple, that people enjoy and doesn’t put too much stress on trying to overthink or make things complicated,” Pettus said. “It keeps things simple, focused on quality ingredients, and keeps the staff really happy.”

Brunch, lunch, poolside and in-room food service all launched at Hotel Willa earlier this week, according to Casetta. Staff will fire up the griddle for brunch, Sundays from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

Similarly, Juliette has expanded its hours and dinner menu. The restaurant is open daily from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., with the bar closing at midnight.

Hotel Willa still has quite a few things up its sleeve. The hotel is finishing up its “Adobe House,” a standalone suite for larger parties with private backyards, fire pits, a hot tub and a full-sized kitchen. 

“I grew up in Taos and to see the sort of goals they had to revitalize what might have just been torn down or left there is exciting,” Pettus said of Hotel Willa's opening. “I think it’s good for the long-term vision of the town.”

The hotel also plans to host regular live entertainment. The Kevin Cannon Jazz Trio will play at Hotel Will the first three Wednesdays of July.

“ We know this is a hotel, but the main people we want to cater to is the Taos community,” LaRoche said. “We want them to be able to have a space where you can gather, listen to your favorite artist, and maybe have meditation or yoga lessons. It’s slowly getting everything together.”

“It's like a puzzle," he added. "But it’s almost ready to frame.”