Category: Diners Drive-Ins and Dives

BarbecueDiners Drive-Ins and DivesFood Network Eats New MexicoKansasRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

Danny Edwards Blvd. BBQ – Kansas City, Missouri

Gil Garduno9:49 AM

Kansas City is known as the “city of fountains.”  It’s also known as the “world’s barbecue capital.” If locals had their way, ever the twain would meet and the city’s fountains would be burbling not with water, but with barbecue sauce.  Barbecue sauce runs through the veins of local barbecue aficionados.  It’s an integral part of the city’s heritage.  More than at the other regions–the Carolinas, Texas and Memphis–in which barbecue is a religion, Kansas City pit masters know that sauce is the crowning touch to their low-and-slow handiwork. In combination with dry rub seasonings, the sauce gives smoked meats their personality.  It’s what you taste most along with the smoky flavor.  One of the very best barbecue sauces my friend Bill Resnik and I experienced during our September, 2012 barbecue tour of Kansas City comes from Danny Edwards Blvd BBQ, a  restaurant Food Network host Rahm Fama contends serves up the “best barbecue in the city.”  The best barbecue deserves the best sauce. At Danny Edwards, ketchup is the base for the sauce which also includes white and brown sugar, chili powder, mustard flour and allspice.  It’s not an overly assertive sauce, but the heat from the chili does…

Diners Drive-Ins and DivesIllinoisRating: Very GoodSandwichUnited States

Al’s #1 Beef – Chicago, Illinois

Gil Garduno7:48 AM

Assume the position!  It’s been called the “Chicago Lean,” the “Italian Stance” and simply “The Stance.”   It’s  the time-tested, traditional art and science of eating Italian beef sandwiches, a Chicago specialty.  Trust me, it’s not the same as eating an ordinary sandwich.  If you don’t follow the process, you’re bound to spill shards of beef, bits of giardiniera and drippings of spice-laden beef gravy onto your clothing.  Italian beef sandwiches are as messy as they are delicious.  Some Italian beef sandwich shops don’t even offer seating.  Instead, they provide high, thin counters with or without stools where you’ll park yourself and proceed to assume the position.  I’ll let the professionals take over from here.  Courtesy of Italianbeef.com: (1)  Put your sandwich on the counter and stand in front of it, with your chest about 12 inches from the edge of the counter (2)  Lean forward so your chest is at a 45-degree angle to the counter (Note: if you’€™re wearing a tie, make sure it’s tucked inside your shirt) (3)  Pick up your sandwich, resting your elbows on the counter (4)  Angle the sandwich at a 45-degree angle to the counter, with the top end towards your mouth. (Imagine…

BurgersClosed in 2015Diners Drive-Ins and DivesFood Network Eats New MexicoGone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoNew Mexico Culinary Treasures TrailNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Santa Fe

Bert’s Burger Bowl – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:57 AM

The tee shirts worn by a nattily attired and enthusiastic wait staff at Bert’s Burger Bowl say it all: “Since 1954: One Location Worldwide.” Celebrating its golden anniversary in 2004, Bert’s seems to transcend time with a winning formula: great burgers, terrific service and reasonable prices. Generations of New Mexicans and visitors have made Bert’s a beloved Santa Fe dining destination.  It is such a beloved local institution that then-Representative Tom Udall entered it into the Congressional Record in September, 2004 to commemorate its 50th anniversary. It’s easy to believe Bert’s popularity is an anomaly. It’s open only until 7PM six days a week and until 5PM on Sundays. There’s nowhere to sit inside the restaurant and if you’re in a hurry, you’re out of luck because every burger is prepared to order. So why do generations of burgerphiles make Bert’s Burger Bowl a popular indulgence? World famous chef Martin Rios of the Anasazi may have said it best in the May, 2007 edition of Santa Fean magazine, “no one beats these burgers.” That’s high praise indeed from a culinary artiste who has been named Chef of the Year by both the city of Santa Fe and the State of…

AmericanClosed in 2016Diners Drive-Ins and DivesFood Network Eats New MexicoGone But Not ForgottenSanta Fe

Zia Diner – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno7:54 AM

In the year 1880, La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís” (“The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi”) bore little semblance to the popular vacation destination and tourist town it is today.  In fact, it was still pretty much a dusty frontier town of the old west with statehood more than a quarter century away.  Despite a population growth of nearly forty percent over the previous decade, Santa Fe was hardly considered a burgeoning center for commerce, much less tourism.  That would all change with the arrival of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company, an event which heralded a new period of prosperity and growth. The railroad facilitated trade between the New Mexico territory and the United States.  In addition to trade in dry goods, foodstuffs, clothing and books, the railroad ferried materials such as bricks and galvanized tin which paved the way for architectural diversity.  The facade of the Santa Fe Plaza, for example, would be transformed from a Spanish-Pueblo architectural style to a hybrid Spanish-Pueblo-Territorial style that persists today.  Victorian style brick buildings became very much in vogue throughout the town.  The arrival of the railroad …

Diners Drive-Ins and DivesMaineRating: N/R (Not Rated)SeafoodUnited States

Maine Diner – Wells, Maine

Gil Garduno9:38 PM

How do you know when a restaurant has really made it?  Is it when that restaurant is recognized by national publications as one of the very best diners in the country?  Or when celebrities go out of their way to dine at its tables?  Is it when more than five-million people have been warmly welcomed at its doors?  When neither rain, nor sleet nor the most stern and frigid of Maine winters can dissuade visitors? The Maine Diner has achieved all of this and so much more.  Richly deserving of all the accolades bestowed upon it, the telltale sign that it’s made it–at least from a pop culture perspective–is when it’s recognized as the restaurant after which Flo’s Offshore Diner is patterned.  If you’ve never heard of Flo’s Offshore Diner, it might be because the Albuquerque Journal isn’t one of the 700 newspapers across America in which Non Sequitur is syndicated. Non Sequitur is simply one of the most creative and honored comic strips in syndication today, winner of four National Cartoonists Society divisional awards, the most prestigious accolade in cartooning.  It is creator Wiley Miller’s vehicle for sharing his wry observations about the absurdities of everyday life.  There are…

Diners Drive-Ins and DivesFood Network Eats New MexicoMexicanRating: Very GoodTaos County

Antonio’s: A Taste of Mexico – Taos, New Mexico

Gil Garduno10:16 PM

A traditional corrido from the Mexican coastal state of Veracruz recounts the story of a smiling woman with magic hands.  The kitchen is the world of Maria Chuchena and the intoxicating aromas and incomparable flavors she concocts in that world are utterly unforgettable.  With her cooking, Maria fills the world with surprises.  If corridos have sequels and characters in folk songs bear offspring, Maria Chuchena’s progeny might well be Antonio Matus, chef and owner of the eponymous Antonio’s: A Taste of Mexico in Taos, New Mexico.  Like the corrido, Antonio is from Veracruz and like Maria Chuchena, the kitchen is his world.  It is where he has been filling Taos with utterly unforgettable surprises for more than a decade. After working in several dining establishments in the Taos area, Antonio launched his self-titled restaurant at the historic El Torreon Hacienda in El Prado, just north of Taos.  The hacienda which dates back to 1847 sits on acreage given to the Valdez family by the famous and infamous Padre Antonio José Martínez, the ecclesiastical leader of northern New Mexico whose unique style of Catholicism was in direct opposition to Archbishop Lamy, the French archbishop who reorganized the Catholic Church in the Southwest. In 2005, Antonio’s…