Category: New Mexico

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Anasazi Restaurant – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

As you gaze in awe and wonder at the luxurious trappings surrounding you everywhere you turn at the Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi, you can’t help but contemplate the irony. Inn of the Anasazi? Throughout their existence the Anasazi never knew luxury or leisure, focusing solely and at all times on survival. Shelter, food and water were of paramount concern in the Four Corners area of the Southwest, a desolate environment which was often brutal and unforgiving. Amidst the ravages of climatic extremes, the Anasazi scratched out an existence and an lasting legacy. While the subsistence living of the Anasazi civilization and the opulence of the Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi are at polar extremes, even stodgy historians might appreciate…

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Five & Dime General Store – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

The late Fray Angelico Chavez, New Mexico’s preeminent historian once wrote about Santa Fe’s growth, “The only threat to her own distinctive glory, and something to guard against these days, is the kind of hurried “progress” which has, not history or humanity, but only money as its sole aim and purpose.” Perhaps nowhere in Santa Fe has that hurried progress been more in evidence than in the world-famous Santa Fe Plaza which has seen significant changes over the years. One of the bastions against progress had been the Woolworth’s department store, in place for several generations, but which finally gave up the ghost just before the turn of the 21st century. In its place stands the Five & Dime General…

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Del Charro Saloon – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Can it truly be that the more things change, the more they stay the same? In 1776, Fermin de Mendinueta, governor and captain-general of the Spanish province of New Mexico, declared that “Santa Fe settlers are “churlish types” who are “accustomed to live apart from each other, as neither fathers nor sons associate with each other.” In 2013, Travel & Leisure published a list of America’s “snobbiest cities” and Santa Fe made the list at number five. The list was based on surveys of the magazine’s readers. Mayor at the time David Cross attributed the perception of Santa Fe snobbery to the enjoyment of the arts, a point validated by the article which quoted a writer as saying “without a…

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Tara Thai Cuisine – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

The Internet is replete with personality assessments. Some–such as a personality assessment based on your choice of pizza toppings–are created by psychologists ostensibly intent on obtaining scientifically valid results, but many others are intended solely for fun and have no real validity. In the latter category, most assessments can easily be manipulated to achieve the results you want. As you’re responding to questions, an inevitable conclusion becomes transparent. You can usually tell by the way you’re answering those questions what the results will be. On the other hand, some personality assessments are baffling. While you may think you’re manipulating the results, the subsequent assessment winds up contrary to your responses. One such assessment purports to tell you which “Big Bang…

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Los Arcos Steakhouse & Bar – Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Because of the geothermal mineral springs which issue from the ground, the city of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico was originally named “Hot Springs.” Seeking to distinguish itself from other cities of the same name and to advertise its plentiful resources, city residents voted to rename the city in response to a challenge rendered by a successful 1950s NBC television show called Truth or Consequences. The rest, as they say, is history. This small resort town with an year round permanent population of just over 8,000 bustles with activity, much of it centered around nearby Elephant Butte lake. Truth or Consequences (T or C to the locals) is a city which honors its history and is an exemplar of small…

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Bodega Burger Co. & Lounge – Socorro, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“A Hamburger is warm and fragrant and juicy. A hamburger is soft and non-threatening. It personifies the Great Mother herself, who has nourished us from the beginning. A hamburger is an icon of layered circles, the circle being at once the most spiritual and the most sensual of shapes. A hamburger is companionable and faintly erotic: the nipple of the Goddess, the bountiful belly-ball of Eve.” ~Tom Robbins Hamburgers have long been the apotheosis of comfort food deliciousness and the favorite food of the masses. Regardless of socioeconomic strata, burgers are enjoyed by nearly one and all–to the tune of some 38 billion per year in the United States alone. That’s three per week on average for every man, woman…

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Ichiban – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

In an episode of Friends, Joey Tribbiani starred in a commercial released only in Japan for Ichiban men’s lipstic. His friend Chandler’s response upon viewing the commercial: “he really is a chameleon.” In Japanese, the word “ichiban” means “number one” or “the best” and can be used either as a superlative (as in the highest of quality or the very best choice) or to denote precedence or numerical order. The fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan, for example, called his eldest son “number one son.” Whether meaning to denote the highest quality or precedence (ranking) among other restaurants, any dining establishment calling itself “number one” is making a pretty audacious claim. Even in a landlocked market like Albuquerque where fresh seafood…

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The Mine Shaft Tavern – Madrid, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter, don’t you call me cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.” Those immortal lyrics, hauntingly performed by crooner Tennessee Ernie Ford describe with a poignant reality, the plight of the American miner even onto the 20th century. By payday, which came at month’s end, miners did indeed owe their souls to the company–for the company house in which they were living, for groceries to feed their families, for doctor bills and even for the tools they used to mine. They were paid in scrip which could only be spent at the company store, leaving them no choice…

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Taste of Himalayas – Los Ranchos De Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

At 40,000 1/2 feet, the imposing Rum Doodle is the highest mountain in the world, surpassing even Mount Everest, its alpine neighbor on the Himalayas. Surmounted only by a group of audacious British mountaineers and their Yogastani porters in an odyssey fraught with misadventure, its ascent is the stuff of which mountaineering legends are made. As if scaling the perilous precipice wasn’t dangerous enough, the intrepid climbers had to endure the inedible culinary miscreations of Pong, the expedition’s sadistic cook. While Rum Doodle the mountain exists only in the 1956 novel The Ascent of Rum Doodle, there’s an immensely popular bar in Kathmandu named for the fictitious mountain. The Rum Doodle Bar is legendary as the gathering place and watering…

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Chicharroneria Orozco – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air ~Hotel California – The Eagles Among the many alluring olfactory temptations emanating from dilapidated and timeworn food stalls and colorful restaurant storefronts throughout Mexico is the warm smell of colitas. They beckon passers-by to experience the aromas, sights, sounds and flavors of one of the Land of Montezuma’s most intriguing and unique dishes, one which will require timorous diners to renounce the heinous malefaction of consuming aartery-clogging and fatty foods. For many Americans, colitas have a major “ick” factor so they stick with the “safe” foods: tacos, tortas, tostadas and tamales (the “T” food group)…and wisely, they don’t drink the water.…

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NM Rodeo Burgers – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

“Traveling with the rodeo It’s the only life I’ll ever know I started in New Mexico Must have been a thousand years ago.” ~Lyrics to “Ride ‘Em Cowboy” by Paul Davis Although my friends and I were all fairly accomplished horse riders in the svelte and carefree days of our youth, Peñasco didn’t have a high school rodeo team so we couldn’t show off our skills in the arena of competition. Instead we entertained ourselves with such non-sanctioned “rodeo” events as hand-fishing for bottom-feeding suckers and tossing them into a chicken coop where a frenzied take-away melee would ensue with feathers and fish entrails flying. We also enjoyed tossing wet bailing wire into electrical wires overhead. if done right, the…