Category: Gone But Not Forgotten

Closed in 2024Gone But Not ForgottenMexicanNew MexicoSanta Fe

Mucho Gusto – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:20 PM

On the surface, Laura Esquivel’s wonderful 1990 tome Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water For Chocolate) is about the struggles of a couple passionately in love but cruelly fated to be kept apart.  Below the surface, however, is a brilliant novel that celebrates the passion food can–and does–inspire. Tita de la Garza longs her entire life for her lover Pedro Muzquiz.  Alas, her life’s path has already been established by a tyrannical mother who decrees that Tita must remain unmarried and take care of her aging parents. Unable to have a life with her lover, Tita infuses her passion and love for Pedro into her cooking.   When her ingredients coalesce and simmer into subtle and unusual flavors, people who taste her cooking experience what she feels: love, hope, passion, sorrow and longing. This brilliant novel is actually divided into twelve sections, each beginning with a traditional Mexican recipe.  Each chapter details the preparation of the dish and ties it to an event in Tita’s ill-fated life.  Tita’s life may also have been celebrated on the walls of a now defunct Santa Fe restaurant. The walls at Santa Fe’s Old Mexico Grill were festooned with art which must have been inspired…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBreakfastClosed in 2017Gone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico Culinary Treasures Trail

Murphy’s Mule Barn – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:09 AM

A mule is an animal with long funny ears he kicks up at anything he hears His back is brawny but his brain is weak he’s just plain stupid with a stubborn streak and by the way if you hate to go to school You may grow up to be a mule. – Bing Crosby Murphy’s law, a popular adage in Western culture is commonly formulated as “if anything can go wrong, it will.”  Murphy’s Mule Barn, a popular North Valley restaurant, hasn’t posited any law that I know of, but if it did, the law might read something like “friendly folks, great food, huge portions, small check.” Named for Murphy’s Mule Barn in Salina, Kansas, the restaurant celebrates all things mule in a cutesy sort of way with an ambience that includes barn implements such as stirrups, harnesses and other mule driving tools, many of the antique variety. Pictures of mules and ceramic statues of burros add rustic charm while posters by prominent New Mexico artist B.C. Nowlin give no indication that Nowlin, one of the restaurant’s most famous “local” patrons starts many a day with breakfast at Murphy’s before heading to his studio (and it’s a good bet…

AlbuquerqueChineseClosed in 2021Gone But Not Forgotten

Great Fortune Chinese Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:30 PM

According to the Chinese Restaurant News, a respected trade publication, there are now approximately 36,000 Chinese restaurants in America.  That’s nearly three times as many Chinese restaurants as there are McDonald’s franchises.  That’s more than the number of McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King franchises combined. No longer considered exotic, Chinese restaurants are part of the fabric of American culture. There is virtually no American city in which Chinese restaurants aren’t plentiful. A survey by a food product development company revealed that 39 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 13 prefer Chinese food over any other ethnic cuisine (interestingly only nine percent chose American). The online Yellow Pages indicate there are more than 50 different Chinese restaurants in Albuquerque, some of which have several stores throughout the city.  By sheer volume alone, you might think there would be more than the scant Chinese restaurants reviewed on Gil’s Thrilling Web site.  You might also wonder why Scott Sharot only listed two Chinese restaurants (Ming Dynasty and ABC Chinese) in his outstanding book New Mexico Chow. I can’t speak for Scott, but there’s a reason I haven’t published reviews of more Chinese restaurants.  At the risk of not being politically…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2007Gone But Not ForgottenSteak

The Falls – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:35 PM

New Mexico has been gilded with incomparable scenic beauty and an abundance of sunshine. Cerulean skies graduate in depth of color the higher above the horizon your eyes climb, interrupted only by velvety smooth red-rock outcrops and snow-capped mountains. Fiery sunsets and brilliant sunrises give the illusion that God just threw a bucket of paint into the sky while processions of wispy cloud formations provide the promise of much needed rain as they sweep past the parched escarpment. A vibrant and diverse topography provides striking contrasts in terrain. It’s easy to focus on the many reasons New Mexico truly earns the sobriquet “the Land of Enchantment.” “Glass is half empty” folks might argue that New Mexico has been “shortchanged” when it comes to water-based enchantment and would point out that “waterfall” in our blessed state means that the water falls only on occasion and in parsimonious amounts. The rest of us would retort that sometimes less is more and cite as evidence, the volcanically formed and preternaturally beautiful Soda falls in the Jemez River valley. Sometimes man creates what God didn’t provide. In November, 2006, the Falls Steakhouse launched in a new edifice just about as far northwest as you…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2009New Mexican

Mis Amigos – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno2:09 AM

For years Los Cuates has been one of the Duke City’s most revered New Mexican restaurants. One of the most popular New Mexican restaurants in the city, diners line up before its opening and late-comers wait as long as it takes for a table to come open. In February, 2003 after the death of its founder and proprietor Frank Barela, four Cuates employees struck out on their own and launched Dos Amigos at the site of a former Village Inn dining establishment just off the I40 freeway. Four years later they moved clear across town to Juan Tabo and changed the restaurant’s name to Mis Amigos. A framed photograph of Barela (pictured at left) attired in an Air Force flight suit hangs prominently in the restaurant’s wait area. Fittingly, the photograph’s caption refers to Barela as “our friend and guardian angel.” Barela isn’t the only hero honored on the Mis Amigos wall of honor. Framed photographs pay loving tribute to several Bernalillo County deputies and Albuquerque city police officers who, in recent years, have lost their lives in the selfless performance of their duties. Letters of commendation to owners of Dos Amigos speak to the county’s and city’s grateful appreciation…

BernalilloClosed in 2007Gone But Not ForgottenMexicanNew Mexico

Pueblito Mexicano – Bernalillo, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:16 PM

Even onto the 21st century the distinction between Mexican and New Mexican cuisine has been somewhat obfuscated. Restaurants which serve cuisine we recognize as uniquely New Mexican (characterized among other things by the use of piquant red and green chiles instead of jalapeno) bill themselves as Mexican restaurants. The situation is exacerbated by ancianos (New Mexico’s elderly population), many of whom refer to their cuisine as “Mexican.” While many New Mexican restaurants errantly bill themselves as Mexican, neither their menus nor their accoutrements do little to clarify the distinction. That isn’t the case at Pueblito Mexicano. First of all, the trappings are uniquely Mexican–from the watermelon colored walls to the clay fired pottery strewn throughout. Secondly, the proof is in the eating. The food at Puelito Mexicano is most assuredly Mexican. While there are many commonalities between New Mexican and Mexican food, there are just as many dissimilarities. Not all New Mexicans seem to grasp that and some complain vociferously rather than celebrating the differences. When I waste time whining that too many New Mexicans don’t appreciate or understand the differences between authentic Mexican and New Mexican cuisine, my dear wife reminds me that in the end, it’s whether you…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2008Gone But Not ForgottenJapaneseNew MexicoSushi

Neko Sushi – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:45 AM

In 1968, Mexico City played witness to one of the most overt and controversial political statements ever issued during the modern Olympic Games when African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos extended their right arms upward and clenched their gloved fists in a black power salute. During our inaugural visit to Neko Sushi in the Sun Country Plaza, we couldn’t help but remember the famous civil rights protest when we espied two ceramic Maneki Neko (beckoning cat) figurines on a shelf. The Maneki Neko, a common Japanese sculpture believed to give its owner good luck, depicts a cat beckoning with an upright raised paw (which supposedly attracts money). The pose is eerily and innocently similar to that of Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the medal ceremony. Obviously there’s absolutely no relationship between two infamous Olympic athletes and a symbolic cat, but there’s definitely a reason the popular Japanese cat figurine has a prominent place in a sushi restaurant–and it’s not just because the owner wants good luck. The owner’s name is Cathy (“Cat” for short) Punya and “Neko” is the Japanese word for cat. Cathy is a restaurant impresario with three other restaurants in the Duke City. Her…

AlbuquerqueChickenClosed in 2007Gone But Not Forgotten

Marco Pollo Charbroiled Chicken – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno2:47 PM

While eating a store-bought rotisserie chicken is somewhat more appealing than than consuming the very last one of Quickie Mart’s perpetually rotating, alutaceous (seared to a leathery sheen under a heat lamp inferno) hot dogs, the prospect of a desiccated rotisserie chicken carcass for dinner is hardly tempting. Experience has taught us that while slightly less leathery, restaurant rotisserie chicken would be a challenge for the most advanced desalination technologies. That’s what we expected during our inaugural visit to Marco Pollo Charbroiled Chicken. Were we ever in for a pleasant surprise! As it turns out, Marco Pollo serves some of the best char-broiled chicken we’ve had in a long time. Best of all, Marco Pollo is the first instantiation of a local restaurant chain with the gloss and grandiosity of a national franchise. It is not related to a similarly named chain enterprise out of Texas. Marco Pollo Charbroiled Chicken is the brainchild of Mark Harden, a plucky local entrepreneur who managed New Mexico’s Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in the ’80s and later ran the now defunct (in New Mexico at least) Pollo Asado. Harden created the recipes, marinades and concept for a restaurant venture he hopes to expand further.…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2009Vietnamese

Kim’s Vietnamese Gourmet Cuisine – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:43 AM

During a memorable 1974 episode of MASH, it was Hawkeye Pierce’s turn at being physician of the day. Throughout the day he treated local indigenous personnel, all of whom identified themselves as “Kim Luck” when they reported in. Eventually Hawkeye turns to Radar O’Reilly and says “Kim Luck? This is the fifth one today.” He then asks the local, “Can you identify yourself?” Patting his chest and smiling broadly, the local responds “This is me!”. Hawkeye’s retort: “This must be my Kim Lucky day.” Albuquerque’s Kim Lucky day came on September 22nd, 2006 with the launch of Kim’s Vietnamese Gourmet Cuisine, named for sisters both named Kim. In this case, Kim is a diminutive of Kimhang and Kimha. The sisters emigrated to Albuquerque from the commune of Nancy, France in 1998 and brought their mother over in 2003. The family triumvirate’s restaurant has a decidedly more French influence than other Vietnamese restaurants in the city while retaining the unique charms and delicious specialties of their ancestral homeland. Kim’s Vietnamese Gourmet Cuisine is situated on the same strip mall in which the outstanding sandwich shop Relish is ensconced. Though one of the smallest Vietnamese restaurants in Albuquerque, it is quickly establishing…

BernalilloBreakfastClosed in 2012Gone But Not ForgottenMexicanNew Mexico

La Hacienda Express – Bernalillo, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:23 AM

You know you’re in New Mexico when you can order breakfast burritos under the golden arches or green chile cheeseburgers at Wendy’s. In doing so, however, you just might be sacrificing tastiness for the sake of expeditiousness. An excellent alternative to chain-induced heartburn and burger boredom is a stop at La Hacienda Express, a favorite of locals in the know. While it may not have as many restaurants as the ubiquitous chains, you can still find one in the Nob Hill area (4400 Central, S.E.), one in the far northeast heights (11200 Montgomery, N.E.) and one at Albuquerque’s Sunport where you can get your last (or first) fix of New Mexican food before flying out (or after landing). There’s a fourth Hacienda Express in Bernalillo. All but the Sunport versions of Hacienda Express are housed in A-frame buildings whose signage announces “breakfast burritos served all day” starting at 6:30 in the morning. If you can find a table, you can eat in or you can drive up and order from an impressive array of New Mexican favorites, including a breakfast burrito that’s worth getting up for in the wee hours. These aren’t the banal burritos you’ll choke down under the…

Closed in 2020Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoPizzaRio Rancho

Sal-E-Boy’s Pizzeria – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:11 AM

For decades Rio Rancho has been called “Little New York” and indeed, for decades New Yorkers made up a large percentage of the population. It wasn’t the proverbial “swamp land in Florida” marketing scheme that brought sophisticated New Yorkers to the barren western wasteland that was Rio Rancho. It was the promise of sunshine and outdoor activities in a bustling, vibrant community that attracted them. It should stand to reason therefore that there would be at least one pizzeria in Rio Rancho that would serve real (or as real as you could possibly get in the Land of Enchantment) New York style pizza.  Frankly, considering the differences in water quality (reputed to be the secret ingredient in authentic New York style pizza) and availability of ingredients between this desert hamlet and America’s most burgeoning megalopolis, skeptics will argue that you’ll never find authentic New York style pizza. Sal-E-Boy’s is perhaps as close as you’ll find in the Albuquerque areas, and unlike some local pretenders to the New York legacy, they do it without modifying their water filtration system! The walls of this strictly take-out pizzeria are adorned with memorabilia from the big apple–from a map of the New York City…