Category: New Mexico

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La Sirenita – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Our friends, John Martin and Lynn Garner and I couldn’t help but laugh. There before our very eyes was the depiction of a meme come to life. In the dining room of la Sirenita was a papier Mâché reproduction of the bottom half of a mermaid. It reminded us of a meme we recently shared.  That meme depicted a grizzled sailor marooned on a desert island.  On the first panel of the meme the sailor smiled lasciviously as a beautiful and buxom mermaid approached the island.  The second panel shows the sailor cooking the bottom half of the mermaid on a rotisserie.  Yeah, it’s gruesome, but come on, it’s funny, too. The bottom half of a mermaid wasn’t the only…

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Dulce River Bakery & Coffee – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“Siblings in an ancient tradition Who take time, temperature and love And bring them together To make something that brings people together. You make more than just food You make friendships. You make joy.” ~Thank You Bakers According to legend, the city of Vienna, Austria has bakers to thank for its existence.  Those legends have it that in 1683, Vienna was under siege by over a hundred thousand Ottoman Turks. After months of trying to starve the city into submission, the Turks attempted to tunnel underneath the walls of the city. Fortunately for the “City o Dreams,” some bakers hard at work in the middle of the night heard the sounds of the Turks digging and alerted the city’s defenders.…

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Duran’s Central Pharmacy – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

In an early episode of the Andy Griffith Show, while contemplating a job offer in South America, Andy tried to assuage his son Opie’s concerns about leaving Mayberry. Instead, he wound up confusing Opie by explaining that people in South America ate something called tortillas. Opie wondered aloud why anyone would eat spiders (tarantulas). Had Opie ever tasted the delicious, piping hot, just off the comal 10-inch buttered orbs at Duran’s Central Pharmacy, it’s unlikely he would ever confuse those grilled spheres with any arachnid. That’s because Duran’s features some of the very best tortillas of any restaurant in New Mexico. These are not the flavorless, paper-thin, production-line, machine-fashioned orbs you find at some restaurants (can you say Frontier Restaurant).…

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Poké Serrano Asian-Latin Fusion – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Ask most people what comes to mind when they think about Hawaiian food and the likely answer is Spam®.  No matter how much the Aloha State’s tourism department does to showcase the state’s diverse and exciting culinary culture, the stereotype that Hawaiians eat Spam® for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between meals is engrained in many of us.  Because Hawaiians do consume seven-million cans of  Spam® per year (with a population of 1.42 million residents in the Islands), it begs the question “Is it really a stereotype if facts bear out the fact that Spam® is so immensely popular in Hawaii.” Not everyone who spends time on the sandy beaches is as svelte as portrayed by media.  Widespread obesity…

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La Nueva Casita – Las Cruces, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Heading east on I-10 from Deming, we espied several billboards touting Las Cruces as “The Real New Mexico.”  Yeah, it’s a branding effort designed to attract more visitors to the City of Crosses, but there’s a lot of truth to the city’s official new slogan.  New Mexico’s second most populous city does have A LOT going for it.  For culture, weather, history, beauty and cuisine, it’s easy to build a case that Las Cruces may well be the real New Mexico.  That may especially be true about New Mexican food.  Every time we dine at a restaurant in the Las Cruces area, I extol the deliciousness, piquancy and authenticity of the food and lament the “dumbing down” of New Mexican…

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Thai Cuisine – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

New Mexican men can be so haughty.  (I don’t include New Mexican women in this categorization because they’re generally smarter.)  We laugh at what Californians, Arizonans and especially Texans call “chili.”  We pride ourselves on machismo, some of which is on display even when we eat out.  We never ask if the chile is hot.  We assume (and hope) it is so we can prove how tough we are.  We question the manhood of any New Mexican who prefers his chile “mild.”  Mild chile is for children and law enforcement officials in Uvalde, Texas.  Give us chile with the piquancy of napalm or volcanic lava.  Give us chile even Satan can’t eat. Yeah, right!  I’ve seen New Mexican men wheeze…

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Ramona’s Mexican Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.” ~Laurie Colwin, Novelist Watch virtually any episode of Kitchen Nightmares and you might just be convinced that families can’t possibly work together in a restaurant.  Kitchen Nightmares, one of Gordon Ramsay’s eight-hundred or so television shows, is rather formulaic–Ramsay spends a week with a failing restaurant in an attempt to revive the business.  Almost invariably, the failing restaurant is owned and operated by a family.  Almost invariably, the drama falls just short of Homer strangling Bart.  Arguments on Kitchen Nightmares are loud and intense.  Copious…

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Slate Street Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

In 2005, Slate Street and an eponymous bistro just north of Lomas became the toast (a garlicky bruschetta) of the town. The Slate Street Cafe opened its doors in July, 2005 in a heretofore lightly trafficked, relatively unknown street north of Lomas. Nestled in the heart of the legal district, the Slate Street Cafe is so, make that Soho cool. Its sleek, modern, high-ceilinged dining room, looming wine bar and capacious patio is frequented by some of Albuquerque’s most hip and beautiful people. It’s a breath of fresh air in a burgeoning downtown district where revitalization doesn’t always appear to be working. The Slate Street Cafe is the braintrust of a proven and very successful pedigree whose bloodline includes founding…

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Cake Fetish – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Americans are absolutely food obsessed!  It’s become alarmingly obvious in our culture of caloric overachievers that few of us miss any meals. It’s also telling (yet seemingly innocuous) that many of the terms of endearment we use for one another are related to food.  Terms such as honey, sugar, pumpkin and others are regularly used by sweet-talking lotharios of both genders. One term of endearment which has grown out of fashion is “cupcake” which in today’s vernacular refers to a woman whose front and back body fat hangs over the waistline, giving the woman the “top of the cupcake” look. While “cupcake” may have become an intended compliment which will get your face slapped, cupcakes themselves have been reestablished as…

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On The Flip – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Though I pride myself on having a sesquipedalian vocabulary, very often pop culture vernacular escapes me.  Even food memes borne of pop culture are well over my head.  If you’re familiar with or use such terms as “good soup,” “cheugy,” “phone eats first,” “glizzy” and “caviar bump,”  you must be from the Gen Z generation.  Were I to use these terms, it would make me seem like a patronizing old fossil trying to be cool. During a December, 2023 visit to the Tin Can Alley, my Kim and I came a restaurant with a curious name neither of us could comprehend.  We quickly dismissed the notion that “On The Flip” had something to do with Albuquerque drivers extending their middle…

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J’s Var-B-Q – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Step into J’s Var-B-Q and the first thing you’re inevitably going to notice is the aroma of smoked meats wafting toward you.  The bouquet of sweet and succulent smoke envelops you like a warm blanket on a cold night.   It’s a comforting smoke sure to elicit involuntary salivation.  It’s a siren’s song luring you to the counter where you place your order from a tempting menu of meats, sandwiches, sides, specialties and desserts.   If the doors to J’s Var-B-Q were to literally stay open, the rapturous redolence of smoked meats would escape onto Montgomery and traffic would be snarled with motorists (maybe even a vegetarian or six) making their way to this bodacious barbecue restaurant. The second thing…