JoAnn’s Ranch O Casados Restaurant – Española, New Mexico
Shortly after it was announced that Mary & Tito’s was selected as a 2010 recipient of the James Beard Foundation’s “Americas Classic” award, the brilliant Albuquerque Journal columnist Leslie Linthicum wrote a gilt-edged tribute to my very favorite New Mexican restaurant. Indicating “the red chile at Mary & Tito’s Cafe brings grown men to poetic fevers,” she quoted something I wrote in my review which she must have found to be sufficiently rhapsodic to warrant mention. For anything I write to be considered even remotely “poetic” by the scintillating columnist is a great honor. Compared to the spell-binding prose and incisive insight which typify Leslie’s columns, my writing is prosaic and dim-witted. It’s akin to comparing Michelangelo’s work on the…