Category: American

BurgersNew MexicoNew Mexico Culinary Treasures TrailNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: ExcellentSan AntonioTravel Channel Eats New Mexico

The Owl Cafe & Bar – San Antonio, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

25 February 2023: Over the past twelve years, the Owl Cafe in San Antonio, New Mexico has been one of the three most frequently launched reviews on Gil’s Thrilling (And Filling) Blog, ranking behind only Mary & Tito’s and the Buckhorn Tavern as the third most frequently launched review of all time. What accounts for the Owl’s popularity? It truly is a timeless institution beloved for its consistently excellent burgers. San Antonio may be but a blip on the map, but its storied and pioneering history make this sparsely populated agricultural community arguably one of New Mexico’s most important towns.In 1629, San Antonio was the site on which Franciscan friars planted the first vineyard (for sacramental wine) in New Mexico (in defiance of Spanish law prohibiting the growing of grapes for wine in the new world.) San Antonio was the birthplace of Conrad Hilton, founder of the ubiquitous Hilton Hotels and more importantly, one of New Mexico’s original legislators after statehood was granted in 1912. San Antonio was also the gateway to the Trinity Site in which the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. While these events are historically significant, they are also inextricably bound by one common element–the uncommonly ordinary facade…

2023 James Beard Foundation "Best Chef - Southwest" SemifinalistAmericanJames Beard Foundation (JBF) Award Nominees & WinnersNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Santa Fe

Horno Restaurant – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

By the time my Kim and I returned to New Mexico in 1995, the days of my family steam-baking chicos in hornos were long past, but she sure was intrigued by our mud and adobe outdoor ovens.  She wasn’t so much interesting in exaggerated tales of our back-breaking labors, but of the process of baking chicos in those hornos.  We explained that the process began by building a fire inside the oven and letting it burn for hours–long enough for the hornos’ mud walls and floor to acquire a thermal capacity perfect for steaming corn.  The corn isn’t inserted into the horno until all that’s left of the fire is red embers.  With the corn nestled comfortably atop the ashes, we would sprinkle water over the corn to inspire steam. We would then seal the horno door with adobe bricks,  We would also seal the “smoke hole” in back of the horno.  The corn was then baked overnight. At this point you might still be wondering what “chicos” are. Chicos begin as an ear of field corn which is tied into ristras (strings) and hung to dry. Alternatively, as we preferred, the corn is baked (steamed) in an horno where…

ArizonaBurgersDog FriendlyRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

Matty G’s – Chandler, Arizona

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In the inspirational 1989 movie, Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner stars as an Iowa farmer named Ray Kinsella. As a farmer, Ray has fallen on hard times.  While standing in his corn field one day, he has a vision of a baseball field where part of his cornfield is.  A disembodied voice (credited by IMDB to “The Voice”) tells him, “If you build it, he will come.” Ray then sets out to make the baseball field of his vision a reality.  All the while, he is spurred onward by the voice urging him that if he builds it, “he” or “they” will come. To the initial consternation of his wife and friends, Ray builds the baseball field. Ray’s friends and family were eventually won over to Ray’s vision when they began to see Shoeless Joe Jackson taking to the field along with the other seven Chicago White Sox players banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series.  The scene culminates with James Earl Jones’ character, Terence Mann, uttering the oft-paraphrased words: “Ray, people will come, Ray.  They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom.  They’ll turn up in your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re…

AmericanBrunchNew MexicoRating: ExcellentTaos County

Sugar Nymphs Bistro – Peñasco, New Mexico

Gil Garduno4:01 AM

Peñasco has always been the beautiful stepsister ignored by the dutiful suitors who prefer the company of Taos, its more glamorous sibling. Taos, the mystical art colony to which new age subscribers seem preternaturally drawn is the terminus of the high road, starting and end point of the enchanted circle and one of the most beautiful communities in the country, if not the world. Sugar Nymphs Bistro is helping Peñasco lure some of those suitors away…at least for a spectacular meal or ten.  A 2002 entry into the Taos county restaurant scene, Sugar Nymphs offers a sophisticated menu that belies Peñasco’s rural simplicity while celebrating its agrarian traditions and serving its local home-grown organic produce.  It’s quite simply one of the very best restaurants of any genre in the Land of Enchantment. In recognition of its bucolic setting and its outstanding cuisine, Sugar Nymphs Bistro was featured in the October, 2004 issue of Gourmet magazine, the internationally renown “magazine of good living.” It was one of eight featured rural restaurants where “the welcome is warm and the flavor regional.” Despite the restaurant’s acclaim, to some local residents, Sugar Nymphs remains “that place founded by los hippies.” Those “hippies” would be…

AmericanBrewery-PubDiners Drive-Ins and DivesFood Network Eats New MexicoNew MexicoRating: ExcellentSanta Fe

Rowley Farmhouse Ales – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:53 PM

Only in John Denver’s hit song “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” is life on the farm “kinda laid back.” In actuality, farm life can be downright arduous, requiring back-breaking work in climatic extremes for low wages. It was much worse in colonial days when life on a farm generally meant very few luxuries outside of a warm fire and a tankard (or ten) of house-brewed ale. Beer was brewed not only to refresh, sustain and comfort hard-working farmers, but because during sanitation-deprived colonial times, it was safer than water. Farm-brewed beer was created with what was on hand, whether it be wheat, hops, barley or rye supplemented with such ingredients as evergreen boughs, juniper berries, honey and fruit. Because beer was made with whatever ingredients were available, the lack of convention led to an emphasis of individuality over uniformity. Along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, beer, it seems, was almost an inalienable right and in many cases, an integral part of a worker’s compensation package. Gentlemen farmers such as George Washington brewed beer not only for themselves, but for their farm workers whose employment contracts often stipulated a certain daily allotment of beer. Washington’s farm workers…

AmericanBetter Call SaulBreakfastLos Ranchos de AlbuquerqueNew MexicanNew MexicoNew Mexico Culinary Treasures TrailRating: Very Good

El Camino Dining Room – Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:05 PM

Many of us who predate, however slightly, the explosion of institutionalized fast food retain a fondness for the remaining independent family restaurants whose arsenal in the competition for hungry diners consists of reasonable portions of great meals at budget-conscious prices all served by a friendly and accommodating waitsfaff. An Albuquerque restaurant which epitomizes those ideals is the El Camino Dining Room, captured brilliantly above by the fabulous photographer Deanna Nichols. The El Camino was built by Clyde H. Tyler in 1950, five years after the latest “war to end all wars” and 13 years after Route 66 was “straightened” so that it would bypass Santa Fe completely.  Albuquerque was much more innocent back then.  Some might even describe it as a “cow town trying to be a city.”  At the time, 44% of America’s population resided in rural areas and the Duke City’s population was only 96,800. Despite no longer being part of Route 66, one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares was 4th Street on which commerce was burgeoning.  It was the perfect location for an independent family restaurant, far from the cavalcade of Howard Johnson’s type restaurants which grew along the interstates. Similar to Howard Johnson’s which prided itself…

AmericanBar & GrillDog FriendlyPizzaRating: Very GoodSocorro

Socorro Springs Brewing Company – Socorro, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:24 PM

Socorro, New Mexico is a dichotomous town.  It is the second oldest inhabited community in our culturally blessed Land of Enchantment, yet it boasts one of the nation’s premier research universities.   It is steeped in history and tradition, inextricably linked to its storied past while embracing the technologies which are laying the groundwork for future peace and prosperity.  According to Visit Socorro “Socorro (literally to give aid, to give succor) was indeed a source of help to the first expedition of Spanish families traveling north from Mexico in 1598, led by Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar. Socorro’s first inhabitants, Piro-speaking people of the Teypana Pueblo, welcomed the scouting party of Oñate and his men. They showed no fear of the strangers, according to Oñate’s official log, and with hand signs told the group what lay ahead. When the Teypana inhabitants unexpectedly gave the group a large gift of corn, Oñate renamed the pueblo Socorro.” Much as Socorro would like to be considered a destination community, it’s better known as a “jumping off” point to nearby destinations.  It’s within minutes of the Bosque del Apache National Life Refuge where 12,900 acres of boggy bottomlands host tens of thousands of…

2020 James Beard Foundation - "Best Chef - Southwest" SemifinalistBarbecueBurgersDog FriendlyJames Beard Foundation (JBF) Award Nominees & WinnersNew MexicoNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Outstanding

Sparky’s Burgers, Barbecue & Espresso – Hatch, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:08 PM

New Mexico’s Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail not only celebrates one of the Land of Enchantment’s most iconic foods, it showcases the restaurants, drive-ins, diners, dives, joints, cafes, roadside stands and bowling alleys which prepare our ubiquitous, incomparable green chile cheeseburger.  To New Mexicans, there is nothing as thoroughly soul-satisfying and utterly delicious! What elevates a burger from the ordinary to the extraordinary is taste bud awakening, tongue tingling, olfactory arousing green chile, New Mexico’s official state vegetable (even though it’s technically a fruit).  In the continually evolving mosaic that describes New Mexico’s cultural intermingling, one constant is green chile, an essential ingredient in many of our recipes and THE centerpiece of any outstanding green chile cheeseburger.  Even such corporate megaliths as McDonald’s and Sonic try their hand at the green chile cheeseburger. It stands to reason that one of, if not THE very best green chile cheeseburger in the Land of Enchantment would be served in Hatch, the undisputed epicenter of New Mexico’s chile production.  Widely regarded as the “chile capital of the world,” the village’s population of around 1,200 citizens increases by twenty times as people from all over the world converge for its annual chile festival.  It’s a…

BurgersNew MexicoNew Mexico Culinary Treasures TrailNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: ExcellentSan Antonio

Buckhorn Tavern – San Antonio, New Mexico

Gil Garduno5:25 PM

Dusk is falling on the western town at the very edge of the parched plains.  Fewer than a dozen buildings line the dusty main street.  Howling winds impel tumbleweeds forward with no regard for obstacles in their path.  Even though neither of the protagonists has uttered the old western cliché “this town ain’t big enough for the two of us,” the scene is always ripe for a confrontation between the two long-time rivals.  You can cut the tension with a knife and fork and it would be utterly delicious. This confrontation isn’t between the black-hearted, black hat wearing villain of western lore and his rival, the clean-cut, white chapeaued cowboy. It’s a rivalry between the Owl Cafe and the Buckhorn Tavern, two heralded hamburger havens separated by less than a block yet inextricably bound by national publications which champion them as among the best of their genre (in westerns, this would be the fastest guns in the west). The Owl Cafe is among the most celebrated restaurants in New Mexico, touted for its incomparable green chile cheeseburger.  In 2003, Jane and Michael Stern, rated the Owl’s green chile cheeseburger on Epicurious.Com as one of the top ten burgers in America. …

AmericanBreakfastClosed in 2022Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew MexicanNew MexicoTaos County

Taos Diner – Taos, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

FX on Hulu’s comedy-drama television series The Bear chronicles the adventures and misadventures of Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, a James Beard Award-winning-chef who returns home to Chicago to run his family’s Italian beef sandwich shop after his older brother’s suicide. Unbeknown to the Chef, his brother left behind mountainous debts, a dilapidated kitchen, and an undisciplined staff.  The highly entertaining series has fueled a spike in the sales of Italian beef sandwiches (piles of thin-shaved roast beef slid au jus into a French roll and topped with giardiniera)–not only at Chicago-specialty restaurants across the fruited plain, but in restaurants (such as Albuquerque’s High Point Grill) inspired to try their hand at Chicago’s sacrosanct sandwich.  Sales of the classic Chicago sandwich are through the roof wherever they’re offered.  In addition to introducing the Italian beef sandwich to diners who had not previously heard of the sandwich,  The Bear has brought to light the chaotic and tedious reality of working in a kitchen.  The Bear introduces you to the inner working of the kitchen–from the food prep to the myriad supply chain and debt management problems restaurateurs have to juggle–not to mention interpersonal dynamics of a kitchen staff and its respective egos.  One…

AmericanDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Taos County

Medley – El Prado, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:01 PM

You’re probably expecting my review of an El Prado restaurant named “Medley” to start with a musical theme, maybe likening the menu to “a musical composition made up of a series of songs or short pieces.”  That would be an easy way to do it, but it would also be slightly disingenuous.  Medley isn’t named for anything having to do with music and though the menu is akin to a composition, the restaurant and wine shop are named for Chefs-Owners Colleen and Wilks Medley.  Medley is also, according to the restaurant’s website is a philosophy–“something good, for everyone.” That something good absolutely starts with its incomparable setting.  Almost equidistant between Taos Plaza and the Taos Ski Valley, Medley is situated in what maps will tell you is El Prado (the meadow).  Your eyes will tell you you’re in an idyll of vast open plains and depthless skies.  Whether attired in their traditional cerulean blue or nature has chosen to paint those skies in a sunset panacea of colors that awaken the soul, those skies will evoke joy, contemplation and maybe even melancholy (at the thought you may have to return home to a less spectacular setting).  Even when storm clouds…