Category: New Mexico

Food Network Eats New MexicoNew MexicanSanta Fe

Tomasita’s – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:50 PM

The decade following America’s Civil War was one of burgeoning expansion westward with railroads leading the way.  Railroads helped open up the Wild West which included the then territory of New Mexico.  They transported wool, hides, piñon, lumber, coal, chile and other agricultural products.  They served as “connectors” between villages, towns and pueblos.  They bridged cultures and transcended distance, traversing through rocky promontories, barren mesas and fecund river valleys.  Railroads spread the news, enlightened the culture and introduced modern amenities to outposts separated by miles and time. The long defunct Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (DRGWR) even had grandiose plans to connect Denver, Colorado and Mexico City  with its narrow-gauge railroad.   During its halcyon days, the 125-mile, seven-hour branch from Antonito, Colorado to Santa Fe, New Mexico earned the sobriquet “The Chile Line” in recognition that much of the freight it hauled was chile peppers. The railroad reached Santa Fe in 1881, but never went further south.  By the 1930s, the decline in the demand for lumber and competition from buses and trucks reduced traffic on the line greatly and on September 1st, 1941, the Chile Line departed Santa Fe’s Guadalupe Station on its final northbound run. The southern terminus…

AlbuquerqueBuffetClosed in 2020Gone But Not ForgottenSalad

Sweet Tomatoes – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:26 AM

In the early 1980s, Albuquerque native and Tokyo Olympian Buster Quist (whose brother Terry I worked for at the time) launched within the Coronado mall, one of the Duke City’s very first salad bars.  The salad bar concept was a few years ahead of its time and the restaurant venture went belly up—a condition portly Americans have, not coincidentally, experienced en masse (no pun intended) over the years. Salad has been a popular dietary staple for a long time, but only in recent years have creative cuisine crafters added imagination, flair and flavor to what used to be bland and unimaginative greenery.  The lack of imagination in crafting salads has always reminded dieters that the word “diet” is simply “die” without the letter “t.”  Today restaurants such as Sweet Tomatoes have added a creative flair that includes high calorie ingredients that can be diet devastating. At Sweet Tomatoes, a burgeoning franchise, it will take self-discipline to steer clear of such diet destroying delicacies as the chocolate chip muffins, chocolate muffins, warm apple cobbler, Asiago focaccia and tomato focaccia bread, all of which are not only tempting, but pretty good. Sweet Tomatoes lets you craft every salad combination conceivable with a…

AlbuquerqueSoul Food

Almost Gourmet Soul Food – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno7:01 PM

NOTE:  Although the Almost Gourmet Soulfood restaurant is now closed, owner Genice Monroe remains in the catering business, working out of a commercial kitchen in the city.  She is working on a Web site from which you will be able to order the fantastic soul food you fell in love with at her restaurant.  Call Genice at (505) 353-0799 for all your catering needs. One of my favorite catechism words, concupiscence, might best describe my passion for soul food.  Concupiscence of the body, I was taught, is “the blind tendency of your feelings and animal appetites to seek satisfaction, regardless of intelligence and reason.” Having lived for nearly eight years on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and within short driving distance of New Orleans, we became intimately, even passionately, familiar with soul food.  It was among our very favorites of any cuisine. To quell our yearnings for soul food (the more authentic the better), we often frequented less than savory” neighborhoods which even Mother Teresa herself might have avoided.  Such “boldly go where no white man has gone before” excursions resulted in our introduction to, among other things, the pit barbecuing of goats, an experience which reminded me somewhat of the matanzas with…

BernalilloBurgersClosed in 2009Gone But Not ForgottenMexican

Charlie’s Burgers & Mexican Food – Bernalillo, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno9:48 PM

Ashley’s Convenience Store on the ill-fated corner of Camino del Pueblo and Avenida Bernalillo achieved the type of notoriety which will be forever associated with a tragedy visited all too often upon New Mexico’s streets.  In November, 2006, a driver already inebriated during a U.S. Airways flight, purchased alcohol at the convenience store before resuming his journey home and causing a tragic head-on collision that killed five members of a Las Vegas, New Mexico family. The state of New Mexico banned the airline from serving alcohol while flying to and from the state.  The state also took the convenience store’s liquor license, forcing it to close.  At the time the convenience store was leased by Albuquerque gasoline distributor Ever-Ready Oil which, in turn, leased its liquor license from Giant Industries. Charlie Williamson, a long-time contractor and owner of the complex, had absolutely nothing to do with the tragedy but was–and this is not intended in any way to diminish the horrific loss of life–one of its victims, too.  His property’s reputation was sullied by a business enterprise perceived to be irresponsible.  The building threatened to fall into disuse and prospects were dim. In September, 2007, the owners of the Bernalillo gas station attached…

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Dahlia’s Central Mexican Cuisine – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno8:34 PM

Because Mexico spans several climatic zones and a diverse topography, its cuisine varies from region to region. As such, it’s grossly unfair to stereotype Mexican food. It’s true that until recent years, most of the Mexican restaurants in the Albuquerque’s area featured the cuisine of the border state of Chihuahua, Mexico, typified by menus offering refried beans, enchiladas, chiles rellenos and the like. The past decade or so, however, has seen the influx of Mexican restaurants serving mariscos, the surprisingly fresh cuisine of the Mexican states bordering its coastal waters. The 2008 introduction of Dahlia’s Central Mexican Cuisine in Rio Rancho was therefore intriguing. My hopes were that Central Mexican cuisine might mean the cuisine of Oaxaca and Puebla, two regions renown for moles. Alas, the family who owns Dahlia’s is from Guadalajara, the largest city in the state of Jalisco which borders the Pacific ocean and is not, as the restaurant’s name might imply, centered geographically in the nation of Mexico. A common misperception might be that the menu would then include, if not specialize, in mariscos, the incomparable seafood prepared so well in the Mexican states bordering the Pacific. Mariscos do indeed have a prominent place on the…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2010Gone But Not ForgottenItalian

Nana’s Trattoria & Pizzeria – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:17 AM

What’sa matta you, hey! Gotta no respect, whatta you think you do, Why you looka so sad? It’s-a pretty bad, it’s-a not-a nice-a place, Ah, shaddap you face! Joe Dolce will just have to forgive me for the liberties I took with the lyrics to his worldwide 1980 number one song Shaddap You Face. Slightly altered, those lyrics express my sentiments when the airwaves are polluted with saccharinely mushy, accordion accented commercials for Italian chain restaurants–commercials like the one in which a small lad escorts his elderly uncle from Italy to Olive Garden for a birthday dinner. You can almost imagine the dumbfounded, aged paisano muttering “stunad” under his breath as he chokes down pasta and longs for the return trip home. Sadly, when Albuquerque’s citizenry thinks Italian food nowadays, they think the Olive Garden, Buca di Beppo, Zio’s Italian Kitchen, Johnny Carino’s and even Pizza Hut. The promise of Italian ethnicity–even the inauthentic parody pitifully proffered by the chain restaurants–remains a marketable concept that draws hungry hordes. Albuquerque, like much of America, has settled for a parade of institutionalized pre-cooked, frozen-shipped Italian food mediocrity. Thousands of the Italian emigrants who were processed through Ellis Island must be gesticulating wildly…

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Let Us Eat Soup – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:15 PM

Genesis 25:34 recounts the story of Isaac’s two sons Esau and Jacob.  Talk about a sibling rivalry.  Coming home from an unsuccessful hunt one day, Esau was exhausted and famished.  The aroma of hot, steaming red lentil soup filled the air and he would do anything to have some.   His brother Jacob, a crafty schemer, agreed to give his brother some soup in exchange for the birthright to which the elder son was entitled.  Esau acquiesced. There are two things about this popular Old Testament story that have always perplexed me. (1)  Just how good can soup possibly be that someone would renounce a birthright to have some?  On Saturday, January 24th, 2009, I was privileged to serve as a judge in the tenth annual Souper Bowl where I found out just how good soup can be.  The 2009 Souper Bowl, Albuquerque’s foremost tasting competition, featured more than thirty of Albuquerque’s finest restaurants showcasing their very best soups and desserts.  More importantly, it served as the Roadrunner Food Bank’s premier fund-raising event. On an overcast winter day when the cloudy grey skies reflected the mood of uncertainty and anxiousness surrounding the economy, the Duke City needed comfort food–the warmth and…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2012Gone But Not ForgottenGreek

Hello Gyro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno10:04 PM

Many scholars and historians consider  the ancient Greeks to be the germinal culture and progenitor of Western civilization as we know it.  Greek civilization has been immensely influential in the arts and sciences, politics and language, philosophy and education.  It may surprise you then to learn that what many consider the archetypal Greek dish is, in chronological terms, a relative newcomer to one of the world’s oldest civilizations. There is no historical source to prove definitively that the gyros were first made any earlier than the 1950s when they are believed to have been invented in Livadia, a city in central Greece.  The first souvlaki on a wooden stick, by the way, was also invented in Livadia at about the same time. As it has done throughout its history, the venerable Greek culture shared its new creation with the rest of the world.  The Chicago area was the first American region introduced to gyros more than forty years ago.  Their popularity has grown like wildfire throughout the United States. Gyros refers not only to the thin, stacked slices of meat that rotate slowly on upright spit, but to the cooking process itself.  In Greek, gryos actually means “a full turn,” a reference…

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Bode’s General Merchandise Deli & Bakery – Abiquiu, New Mexico

Gil Garduno4:28 PM

Mention food and convenience store in the same sentence and the first thing likely to come to mind is one of those perpetually rotating, alutaceous hot dogs seared to a leathery sheen under a heat lamp inferno. Not even a large slushie spiked with your favorite adult beverage would make that hot dog palatable. Mention food and gas station in the same sentence and all of a sudden that leathery hot dog at the convenience store sounds like a gourmet meal. Salty, cylindrically shaped dry meat snacks with the texture of sawdust and air-filled bags of Cool Ranch Doritos are typical gas station fare. Now mention New Mexican food and gas station in the same sentence and the likely image conjured is scatological, having more to do with “gas” than food and we’re not talking petroleum here. In 2007, Sarah Karnasiewicz, senior editor of Saveur, trekked back to New Mexico to discover some of  the Land of Enchantment’s best “filling stations,” service stations in which you can actually find food that is not only fit for human consumption, it’s quite good, too.  She observed that, “we know of no other state in the Union where you can so consistently find…

AlbuquerqueBakeryBreakfastClosed in 2012DonutsGone But Not ForgottenSpecialty

Paradise Donuts – Bosque Farms, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:41 PM

Though often boorish and crude, America’s favorite everyman philosopher Homer Simpson is prone to occasional bouts of insight. Who can argue with such Homeric sagacity as, “donuts, is there anything they can’t do.” At first browse that statement may appear clouded, make that glazed, but it’s a statement replete with credibility–and not solely with police officers. Cultural anthropologist Paul R. Mullins posits that one of the best ways to examine a culture is by looking at its eating habits and regional cuisines. He reasons that Americans don’t really have a culinary culture we can call our own, that the American culinary experience is an amalgam of appropriated customs and cooking techniques. The best evidence of this, in his mind, is the donut whose lineage can be traced to the Chinese, French, Germans and Dutch. In his terrific tome Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut, Mullins examines the evolution of the donut and juxtaposes the rise and fall of its popularity against the development of America’s consumer culture. He exploits the negative stereotypes and perceptions surrounding donuts (think indolent cops and Homer Simpson’s obesity), detailing how the donut has been equally regaled and reviled, the latter often without merit. When…

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Benny’s Mexican Kitchen – Bosque Farms, New Mexico

Gil Garduno1:45 PM

“Whenever I need to leave it all behind Or feel the need to get away I find a quiet place, far from the human race Out in the country Whenever I feel them closing in on me Or need a bit of room to move When life becomes too fast, I find relief at last Out in the country.” In today’s dog eat dog rat race world (two bad animal metaphors in one sentence), who doesn’t dream of a peaceful idyll to which you can escape? Somewhere out in the country. *Appropriately the group expressing that sentiment so well in the above lyrics is Three Dog Night whose hit song “Out In The Country” made it to #14 in the pop charts back in August, 1970.  I know doctors, lawyers, scientists and white- and blue-collar employees from other vocations who make their escape just fifteen minutes south of Albuquerque–to country life in verdant Bosque Farms. Situated on the east side of the Rio Grande on a flat meadowy valley, Bosque Farms is a coalescence of rural, suburban and agricultural lifestyles along the braided routes of the historically significant Camino Real (the Royal Road) which skirts the Rio Grande.  Bosque Farms…