The owners of Lily and Liam Bistro on NM 528 extended the eatery’s hours Jan. 1 to start serving customers later.

“We submitted our beer and wine license application, so in anticipation of that we wanted to open for dinner hours,” co-owner James Garrigan said.

The bistro now serves its whole menu all day, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week.

The beer and wine license will allow the Garrigans to serve local specialty alcohol. “It will be fancy like our menu,” James said.

James, a professional chef, and his wife Megan opened the bistro in October 2019 with the hope of connecting to their hometown community.

They have wanted to extend the hours since they opened, and now that they have, it provides opportunity for them to host more events.

“We are having more tasting events in the evenings now. Of course, we serve our menu all day, but from 3-7, if people want something special or different, they can do a tasting,” Megan said.

They don’t just host tastings, though. On holidays they have small events for people to participate in.

“For Christmas we did homemade gingerbread and people could build houses together,” Megan said.

She also said Valentine’s Day will have a small event going on for couples.

The extra hours have alleviated wait times for customers as well.

“We are so busy on the weekends that we don’t have enough room. The extra hours helped spread out the day for customers and staff,” James said.

The Garrigans say that the new hours have created a lot of excitement for customers.

“Fortunately we survived COVID, and the community keeps supporting us through it all,” Megan said.