Category: Closed in 2023

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Tortilla Kitchen – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

A sure sign Spring has arrived In rural New Mexico is the annual ritual of cleaning the acequias, the community operated ditches used to irrigate fields, gardens and lawns. Early in the morning, property owners or their designated paid representatives would convene at appointed spots to begin the effort. Work crews typically consisted of grizzled veterans, most of whom acted as “mayordomos” (bosses) and young bucks like me with strong backs. Not surprisingly, distribution of work was…shall we say, quite inequitable. The old-timers would order us around, shouting out instructions like elderly drill sergeants. Most of us youngsters didn’t mind. During frequent breaks we got to hear some of the most ribald and raunchy stories from highly respected elders. One…

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Tikka Spice South Asian Street Food – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED*)

Gil Garduno

*NOTE:  Only the brick and mortar version of Tikka Spice has closed.  Tikka Spice still operates out of a food truck. In baseball it’s called the “Triple Crown,”an incredibly rare achievement in which a player leads the league in average, home runs, and runs batted in.  To win the triple crown, a player must tremendous power to hit for distance as well as a very keen eye to hit baseballs thrown at nearly 100 miles per hour and place them on the field in positions that result in driving in runs.  In horse racing, the term Triple Crown represents a series of horse races for three-year-old Thoroughbreds, consisting of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes.  To win all three of…

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Panaderia Guatemalteca Eterna Primavera – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

To truly understand the cuisine of Guatemala, it helps to understand why this Central American paradise is known as the “Land of Eternal Spring.”  With nineteen diverse ecosystems, Guatemala boasts of jungles, forests, beaches, volcanoes and an expanse of natural resources.  Thick, lush vegetation enrobes seemingly never-ending mountain landscapes in verdant hues.  Magnificent pristine waterfalls cascade over those mountains, feeding the rivers that nourish fecund lands.  A belt of fire formed by active volcanoes is often shrouded by clouds just as ominous.  Bordered at its west by the Pacific and by the Atlantic at its east, Guatemala is graced by a diversity of climates and elevations. Relatively mild year-round, the climate is tropical and sub-tropical but varies greatly in relation…

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El Cotorro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

There’s a scene in the 2006 lucha libre (Mexican professional wrestling) comedy film Nacho Libre in which Nacho’s ectomorphic tag team partner Esqueleto (“the skeleton”) orders two grilled, buttered and chile-dusted elotes (corn-on-the-cob) from a street vendor. Esqueleto graciously attempts to hand one to Nacho who rebuffs the offer, knocks the elotes to the ground and bellows “get that corn out of my face!” That antagonistic act so enraged Esqueleto that he leaped on Nacho’s back and attempted to throw his corpulent partner to the ground. The sight of the two golden elotes tinged with red chile on the ground was funny at the time, however, after consuming the elotes at El Cotorro, we would consider knocking elotes to the…

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Ale’s Cakes – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Hypocrisy thy name is Gil. “For someone who whined so much about a one-hour (each way) commute to work, you’re willing to drive a hundred miles for lunch” my Kim lamented.  Our lunch destination wasn’t nearly a hundred miles away, but when you’re hungry it probably seems that way.  It would have seemed even further had we traversed the entirety of the street in which our intended restaurant is located. In fact, from its starting point to its terminus, that drive would truly have seemed interminable through all its winding and congested permutations. The street of which I speak is Albuquerque’s own Coors Blvd, otherwise known as New Mexico State Road 45.  According to Wikipedia, Coors Blvd is 22,918-miles long…er,…

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Nick & Jimmy’s Bar & Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Legendary American chef, author and television personality Julia Child was often exasperated with what she perceived as American’s propensity for culinary laziness, once commenting that “the trend in the U.S.A. was toward speed and the elimination of work.” “Americans,” she noted, equated as “gourmet” such “horrible glop” as “TV dinners, frozen vegetables, canned mushrooms, fish sticks, Jell-O salads, marshmallows and spray-can whipped cream.“ Julia Child obviously didn’t know Dave Hurayt, a good friend and fellow gastronome who’s shared some wonderful recipes with me. While Dave may not have spent two years and nearly 300 pounds of flour attempting to bake the perfect loaf of French bread as Julia Child once did, he experiments painstakingly with the recipes he creates, laboring…

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Santa Fe Bite – ABQ – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

In 1940, Thomas Wolfe penned You Can’t Go Home Again, a novel whose deeply existential title prompted more than water cooler conversations.  It prompted profound philosophical discourse, internal reflection and pangs of nostalgia about better days remembered.  Readers pondered if it was true that “you can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood.”  Realists concluded the novel’s title meant you can’t return to a place of another time and expect that everything would be exactly the same.  Optimists  took it a bit further, positing that while some things may change, other things don’t change and some things might actually be better. Wolfe’s novel came to mind when we first heard a legendary Santa Fe institution had…

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Rebel Donut – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Many years ago if someone proposed a wager of “dollars to donuts,” you might have been well advised to take it. The phrase “dollars to donuts” essentially meant the person proposing the wager thought he or she had a sure thing, that he or she was willing to to risk a dollar to win a dollar’s worth of donuts. Donuts weren’t worth much at the time (and they weren’t very good either) so winning a bet might result in being paid off by a baker’s dozen or so donuts. Today, if someone offers a “dollars to donuts” wager, the counter to a five dollar bet might be two donuts and the donuts would likely be terrific. Visit a donut shop…

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Kolache Factory – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

“If security could ever have a smell, it would be the fragrance of a warm Kolache.” ~Willa Cather When you marry someone, you don’t just acquire a new spouse. You inherit an entire family of individuals with all their personality quirks, foibles and eccentricities. For me, “Big Fat Irish-Swedish-New Mexican Wedding” quickly morphed into “Home Alone” with me in the role of Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin). In all fairness, I only felt alone among my in-laws when discussions about where to have dinner came up. My in-laws’ reactions to some of my dinner suggestions (Vietnamese, Korean, Basque) were similar to the reaction you might have if I’d suggested we try cannibalism. You have to understand that my in-laws embody the…

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Sauce Pizza & Wine – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

To celebrate the 100 year anniversary of pizza in America, James Beard Award-winning food writer Ed Levine ate nothing but pizza for an entire twelve month period, taking a representative pulse of the best from among thousands of pizza purveyors. His terrific tome, Pizza A Slice of Heaven, published in 2010, provides a definitive guide to a beloved staple that in its elemental form is simplicity itself–bread, cheese and whatever toppings a pizzaioli artisan might care to add. To the surprise of cognoscenti and plebeian alike, Levine declared the best pizza in the fruited plain (and the world, for that matter) to be made in the unlikely town of Phoenix, Arizona where the intensely brilliant Chris Bianco plies his trade…

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Taco Fundación – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Consider it sacrilege if you will, but some pundits believe the taco is poised to become the most ubiquitous and popular dish in the fruited plain. One such heretic is eater.com’s Nick Solares who made the audacious prediction that the taco will replace the hamburger as the American national dish within fifty years. He makes a great case for his conjecture, citing such factors as the rising Hispanic immigrant population, America’s hipster culture, and people in general embracing the taco as a budget alternative to American fast foods. New York City-based chef Alex Stupak is similarly inclined. In recent years, he points out that largely because of the rising cost of beef, chicken has supplanted it as the most consumed…