Author: Gil Garduno

Since 2008, the tagline on Gil’s Thrilling (And Filling) Blog has invited you to “Follow the Culinary Ruminations of New Mexico’s Sesquipedalian Sybarite.” To date, more than six million visitors have trusted (or at least visited) my recommendations on more than 1,300 restaurant reviews. Please take a few minutes to tell me what you think. Whether you agree or disagree with me, I'd love to hear about it.
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Friends of Gil (FOG) Dinner: Extraordinary Food, Fun and Friendship

Gil Garduno

It’s easy to impress me. I don’t need a fancy party to be happy. Just good friends, good food, and good laughs. I’m happy. I’m satisfied. I’m content. ~Maria Sharapova So just what goes on at a Friends of Gil (FOG) dinner? If you’re thinking it’s a gathering of a bunch of pretentious food snobs and aesthetes getting together to try one-upping one another with our highfalutin knowledge of the culinary arts, nothing could be further from the truth. True, the Friends of Gil are all passionate and knowledgeable food enthusiasts who appreciate and understand great food, but we’re all ordinary people with a broad and diverse range of interests and backgrounds. We’re people who enjoy great conversation and great…

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Cafe Caribe – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

When you’re on one of the Caribbean islands, sometimes it’s hard to picture how they fit in with the rest, but when you see them all joined together like a necklace from space, you see the natural geographic connectedness of them all. ~Chris Hadfield In virtually every sense, the Caribbean is a “melting pot.” It’s an amalgam, a hodgepodge, mishmash…a potpourri. It’s a gallimaufry, a confused jumble or medley of things. It’s a blend of African, Amerindian, European, East Indian, Arab and Chinese influences. Attitudinally, it’s festive and vibrant, bold and beautiful, fun and exciting. It inspires a joie de vivre. So does the diverse and delicious cuisine prepared throughout the island nations. If you’re wondering how you may have…

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Lucky Boy – Albuquerque, New Mexican

Gil Garduno

During its seventh season, the X Files television series in which FBI agents investigated paranormal phenomena featured an episode in which a ravenous Lucky Boy employee in California struggled against his craving for human brain matter (almost anything goes in the Golden state). The most paranormal thing about the Duke City Lucky Boy is its “east meets west” dining concept. Nowhere else in town can you order Chinese and American food so inexpensively and from the very same menu. If you think about it, ordering inexpensive Chinese and American food from within one menu shouldn’t be such an anomalous event–especially when you consider that many of Lucky Boy’s patrons are UNM students, many of whom know how to stretch a…

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Mekong Ramen House – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

In a 2009 movie entitled Ramen Girl, Abby, a wayward American girl unacculturated to life in Tokyo witnesses the radiant smiles on the faces of diners as they eat ramen and receives an epiphany that her life’s calling is to become a ramen chef. Over time she persuades a ramen restaurant’s temperamental Japanese chef to mentor her. Initially he assigns her to perform the most menial and degrading tasks, but she perseveres and eventually convinces her tyrannical mentor of her sincerity and he teaches her how to make ramen. Alas, it’s ramen with no soul until she also learns that ramen must be prepared from the heart and not from her head. Ramen with soul? Ramen chefs? Ramen prepared from…

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Ortega’s New Mexican Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

From Ortega’s Facebook Page: It has been our pleasure to serve Albuquerque and visitors for nearly 32 years. We want to thank you for supporting Ortega’s Restaurant for more than three decades. We have enjoyed your company and made many friends over the years. On September 12, 2020, we will close our doors for the last time. If you were raised in New Mexico thirty or more years ago, chances are you weren’t raised on the healthiest of diets. New Mexican food, while incomparably delicious, isn’t exactly a dietician’s dream. Even our beloved frijoles, the healthiest of carbohydrates, were prepared in lard…and many of our dishes which weren’t prepared with lard, had enough cheese to keep Wisconsin fiscally afloat. It’s…

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Kasbah Mediterranean – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind Had to get away to see what we could find Hope the days that lie ahead Bring us back to where they’ve led Listen up to what’s been said to you Would you know we’re riding on the Marrakech Express Would you know we’re riding on the Marrakech Express All on board that train – Crosby, Stills & Nash For decades, Hollywood has portrayed the ancient Moroccan city of Marrakech as a venue in which mystery and intrigue can be found along every narrow street and behind every sharp turn, a place of fantasy where fire-eaters, sword-swallowers and snake charmers perform–a city with a dizzying array of food stalls, richly adorned palaces…

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Heimat House and Beer Garden – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

“We’re not normal people. We’re the Griswolds.” Laughs abound in National Lampoon’s European Vacation, the 1985 movie which follows the antics of well-meaning blunderer Clark W. Griswold and his equally inept family. In a television game show called “Pig In a Polk,” the Griswold family accidentally wins a trip to Europe where they leave a trail of destruction everywhere they go (who can forget when Clark knocked down Stonehenge by accidentally backing into it with a rented car?). The family foray into Germany was no less fraught with hapless humor. In a German village, the Griswolds burst in on “Fritz and Helga”, a bewildered elderly couple whom they mistakenly believe are long-lost relatives. Though language barrier issues prevent any mutual…

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Padilla’s Mexican Kitchen – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“Why, this here sauce is made in New York City!” “New York City? Git a rope!” Uttered in a 1980s commercial for Pace Picante sauce, those lines expressed the ire of several hungry cowboys who threatened to string up the cook for serving a “foreign” salsa (translation: not made in Texas). That commercial also brings to my mind the annual issue in which–from 1999 through 2005–Hispanic magazine named its top 50 Hispanic restaurants across America. The sentiment so eloquently expressed by those ravenous cowpokes reflects just how many New Mexicans feel when Hispanic magazine listed among its top 50, only two or three New Mexico restaurants per year. It really rankled us when both Texas and California had four times…

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Blue Grasshopper Brew Pub – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

If you’ve ever wondered why the term “pink elephants” has long been recognized as a euphemism for a drunken hallucination, credit author Jack London. In his autobiographical tome, he described himself as “the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants.” When we first heard of the Blue Grasshopper Brew Pub in Rio Rancho, we wondered if it, too, was a euphemism for adult beverage overindulgence. Frankly, the reason behind the name is almost as good as Jack London’s euphemism. The sobriquet was bestowed upon co-owner Peter…

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Effingbar and Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

The late comedian and beloved social critic George Carlin might be surprised at how far America has come (some might say how much we’ve regressed) when it comes to uttering foul invectives, especially the “seven words” he postulated “you can never say on television.” While most of us still won’t vocalize the infamous “F-word” in polite company, its diminutive version has become part of our vernacular. Whether on screen or in print (or on shirts emblazoned with the abbreviation F.U. (which doesn’t stand for Florida University)) it’s “F this” and “F that.” It’s been said that the F-word is the most versatile word in the English language in that it can be used as an action verb, passive verb, adverb,…

AlbuquerqueAmericanClosed in 2020Gone But Not Forgotten

Model Pharmacy – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Albuquerque’s Model Pharmacy is an anachronism–a genuine throwback to the days in which old fashioned drug counters shared retail space with lunch counters and soda fountains. In every sense, the Model Pharmacy is chronologically out of place as an independently owned, family operated business in a world of corporate conglomerations that dominate the pharmaceutical business (such as the megalithic Walgreen’s store directly across the street). The pharmacy’s apothecaries still prescribe and dispense drugs, but an even bigger draw than sundry medicines are the high-end European beauty products and perfumes on the venerable pharmacy’s shelves. Renown food author Jane Stern indicates on the Roadfood Web site she and her former husband and writing partner Michael have made a foodie standard that…