Gil's Thrilling (And Filling) Blog
Follow the Culinary Ruminations of New Mexico's Sesquipedalian Sybarite. 1240 Restaurant Reviews, More Than 12,300 Visitor Comments…And Counting!
“I wanna open a Jamaican/Irish/Spanish small plate breakfast restaurant and call it Tapas the Morning to Ja.” ~Harris Wittels (Comedian) It wasn’t Wittel’s humorous quip that came to mind as we approached Damacio’s Bar & Tapas but rather something legendary raconteur and television host Anthony Bourdain once said. During a 2013 episode of his CNN television show Parts Unknown filmed
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My friend Bill Resnik, a professional stand-up comedian for more than two decades, performs a bit in which he “translates” Spanish terms for linguistically challenged audiences. “Paseo del Norte,” for example, translates to “Paseo of the Norte.” For Duke City residents, the “Northern Route” is no joke. It’s the corridor from the Northeast Heights to Albuquerque’s burgeoning West side, ferrying
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“Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side Keep on the sunny side of life It will help us ev’ry day, it will brighten all the way If we’ll keep on the sunny side of life.” ~Keep On The Sunny Side Lyrics According to Statistica, a leading provider of market and consumer data, in 2019 the per capita
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“Toasting makes me uncomfortable, but toast I love. Never start the day without a good piece of toast. In fact, let’s toast to toast.” ~George Costanza You might think that only a short, stocky, slow witted bald man would live a life so mundane as to even consider making a toast to a good piece of toast. That may have
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Urban Dictionary, that oft hilarious, veritable cornucopia of slang, jargon and streetwise lingo, defines “lush” as “someone who drinks a lot.” (Actually, there are several pages of similar definitions for “lush” in the “peoples’ dictionary,” but this one was the best fit for this PG-rated blog.) When I asked Sandy Gregory, a self-admitted “food industry lifer” and co-owner of Albuquerque’s
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In 1620, King Philip III of Spain issued a royal decree mandating that each of the 19 recognized New Mexican Pueblos elect by popular vote, a governor, lieutenant governor and other officers as might be needed to carry on the Pueblo’s affairs. The decree required that elections take place at the close of a calendar year with installation into office
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My sagacious friend Bill Resnik is like a 6’5″ Yoda. Perhaps because he was a stand-up comedian for several decades, he seems to invite good-natured teasing from among our mutual friends and colleagues. Like gunfighters sporting black hats in the westerns of yore, would-be comics seem to come out of the woodwork to challenge the fastest quipster in the west.
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Many of us look at an unused and timeworn historical building and a wave of nostalgia sweeps over us as we imagine what life was like when that building teemed with activity. Some see such a building as a pig in need of lipstick, nothing a coat of paint and a few nails can’t fix up. Others see that same
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“I went to a general store but they wouldn’t let me buy anything specific.” ~Steven Wright While nay-sayers may regard New Mexico as an anachronism–stuck in a time warp somewhere between Victorian times and the Happy Days of the Fonz and Richie Cunningham–there are artifacts of the “good old days” for which I wax nostalgic. Among those artifacts is a
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Now I lay myself down to sleep I pray oh lord my soul to keep Cause if I should die before I wake I hope up in Heaven they’ve got lobster and steak It’s a sin if Heaven ain’t got an Indigo Crow Best food down here up there they’ve gotta know. A Sin if Heaven ain’t got an Indigo
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There are just some restaurants at which the stereotypical Ralph Cramden hungry man shouldn’t dine. Hannah & Nate’s might be one of them. It’s not that the food isn’t good. That’s certainly not the case. The troglodytic nature of men is such that we whine and complain when we have to wait more than two minutes for our meals and
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My friend Schuyler jokes that because the diet of my formative years was mostly beans, chile and tortillas as well as chile, tortillas and beans, I’ve developed an insatiable curiosity and appetite for anything that isn’t beans, chile and tortillas (although I still love those). “No one else,” he claims “is equally enthusiastic about bacon-infused decadence one day as he
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Garduños just can’t seem to keep up with the Joneses, at least in terms of familial propagation. The 2010 United States Census indicates more than a million instances (1,425,470 to be precise) of the surname Jones, making it the fifth most common among the 6.3 million surnames recorded. In comparison, the surname Garduño belonged to only 6,912 individuals, ranking it
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“Now i lay me down to sleep And pray the Lord my soul to keep If i die before i wake, feed Jake He’s been a good dog My best friend right through it all If i die before i wake, feed Jake.” ~Pirates of the Mississippi “On one hand,” my Kim tells me, “you’d make a great politician.” “You
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“I‘m only eating the skins, so the chicken’s up for grabs.” ~Joey Tribbiani Several of my earliest memories of growing up in agrarian Peñasco, New Mexico involve chickens. Some of those memories–such as getting viciously pecked by my Grandma Piedad’s cantankerous old rooster–were rather painful. Other memories, however, were of mischievous fun my brothers and I had with our friends
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There are a phalanx of “best of” lists online and in print publications that celebrate restaurants deemed true stand-outs worthy of accolades. Such lists are obviously very subjective though by no means definitive. That holds true as well to the concept of restaurant review ratings, a mere snapshot in time valid really only to that reviewer at that very specific
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