Category: Gone But Not Forgotten

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2018Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoVegetarian/Vegan

Vibrance – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:33 PM

My Chicago born-and-bred brother-in-law Chuck considers being asked to lunch at a vegan restaurant akin to being asked to a Green Bay Packers pep rally. It’s a violation of a Windy City cultural norm–as inappropriate as telling a Chicagoan that: ketchup belongs on hot dogs, Mike Ditka and Da’ Bears could never beat the Detroit Lions, calling Mike Royko a mere journalist and that it’s okay to ridicule Harry Carey’s rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballpark.” As with many Chicagoans, Chuck is an avowed meat and potatoes zealot (fanatic isn’t strong enough a word). Because he never would have acceded to my request to dine at a vegan restaurant, I waited until he answered “I’m up for anything” when I asked what he’d like for lunch. Yeah, it’s duplicitous and politician-like, but my Kim and I genuinely believed Chuck would like Vibrance. Vibrance. Even the name bespeaks of veganism (or militant veganism to a carnivorous Chicagoan). Ask any vegan and they’ll tell you their lives are indeed more vibrant since they made the lifestyle change to veganism. They’ll tell you they’ve improved their heart and gut health, lost weight, lowered blood sugar levels and reduced their risk of…

AlbuquerqueBurgersClosed in 2017Gone But Not Forgotten

Papaburgers – Los Ranchos De Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno2:18 AM

Back in the 1960s, A&W’s Papa Burger was a rite of passage for me. By age nine, I had surmounted the phased progression through A&Ws burger family–Baby Burger, Mama Burger and Teen Burger–and was ready to prove my mettle with the largest of A&Ws burger family, one beefy behemoth only my dad, a paragon of masculinity, had ever ordered. Earning the right to order one was acknowledgement that I was growing into a man. Polishing one off brought newfound respect from my younger brothers, both of whom longed for the day my dad would order a Papa Burger for them. In the 1960s, A&W’s burger family signified a formidable line-up of burgers served in more than 2,000 A&W restaurants throughout the fruited plain and Canada. Each member of the burger family was represented by cartoonish fiberglass statues, the largest of which was the Papa Burger, a bald, vested gentleman holding a large frosted mug on one hand and a gigantic burger on the other. Papa Burger stood eight and a half feet tall and the frothy mug of root beer was three feet tall. Driving on Chavez Avenue just west of Fourth Street and espying a restaurant called Papaburgers brought…

AlbuquerqueAsianClosed in 2024Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)SushiThai

Fareast Fuzion – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

A Journal of Consumer Research study published in 2012 revealed that consumers equate eating meat with their concept of masculinity. To the dismay of spinach-lovers like Popeye, respondents indicated meat has a more masculine quality than vegetables. Study participants considered male carnivores to be more masculine than their vegetarian counterparts (ostensibly Bill Clinton was more masculine when he scarfed up Big Macs than he is now that he’s a vegetarian). “To the strong, traditional, macho, bicep-flexing, all-American male, red meat is a strong, traditional, macho, bicep-flexing, All-American food,” wrote the researchers. “Soy is not. To eat it, they would have to give up a food they saw as strong and powerful like themselves for a food they saw as weak and wimpy.” Researchers acknowledged that with a diet rich in manly meats, equally manly health conditions such as heart attacks are inevitable. So, if we shouldn’t eat meat, what should we paragons of masculinity eat? Certainly not quiche or kale! Bruce Feirstein told us in 1982 that “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.” Sure, that title was a tongue-in-cheek satire of masculine stereotypes, but could there be a grain of truth there somewhere? More recently, an author who goes by the…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2025Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenItalianNew MexicoPizza

Farina Alto – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno8:35 AM

FROM FARINA ALTO’S WEBSITE:  A new chapter of Italian dining is coming to the Northeast Heights this December. Cantina Hospitality Group, the team behind beloved New Mexico restaurants like Brekki Brekki, Poki Poki Cevicheria, Tamashi, Thai Boran, and Sushi King, has announced its latest concept: Pazzi Ristorante Italiano — set to open in the former home of Farina Alto. Much thought, deliberation and market research usually goes into the naming of a business, but every once in a while, one linguistic aspect or another isn’t fully explored to the nth degree. Take for example Chevrolet’s problems marketing the Nova in Latin America where the term “no va” means “it won’t go” in Spanish. Even though the Nova sold quite well, the car’s name wasn’t without irony and humor. (Yes, I know the Nova story is an urban myth, but it helps illustrate my point.) Worse, a slogan for Frank Perdue chicken, “it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken,” translated (also in Spanish) as the equivalent of “it takes a sexually aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.” Obviously, the “Alto” portion of Farina Alto Pizzeria & Wine Bar in Albuquerque is intended to accentuate the “Heights” where the…

AlbuquerqueBakeryClosed in 2018Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoSandwichVietnamese

Rolls & Bowls – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno2:46 PM

“The banh mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.” ~Calvin Trillin By most historical standards, the banh mi is a rather new entrant in the world culinary stage. Its evolution into the revered sandwich we know and love today began in 1859 with the French arrival in Saigon. Along with military occupation, the French brought their c’est delicieux cuisine to Southeast Asia…although to be clear, the colonial rulers never had the benevolent intent of introducing the Vietnamese to their more “refined” cuisine. The French, in fact, initially forbade their subjects from partaking of such stables as bread and meat, believing the Vietnamese diet of fish and rice kept them weak. In time, wealthy Vietnamese who embraced French rule were allowed to purchase sandwiches from expensive bakeries which constructed them on French baguettes (which were too pricey for the poverty classes). One of the culinary traditions the French brought to Vietnam was casse-croute, a term which translates literally to “break or crush the crust,” but which more often translates to “snack.” Among the most popular snacks was a traditional French baguette which the “upper crust” served with a plate of cold cuts, pate, ham, cheese and butter. Is…

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Pop-Up Dumpling House – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 PM

“And her dumplings were so light they would float in the air and you’d have to catch ’em to eat ’em.” ~Author: Fannie Flagg Think you know dumplings? Believe you’ve tried almost every type of dumpling there is? That’s what I thought until discovering a Wikipedia page called “List of dumplings” which essentially opened up a large world of ne’er sampled dumplings. For the glass-is-half-full types among us, this list is a challenge…an opportunity to broaden our dumpling horizons. Alas, such a horizon (and waist) broadening experience will mean crossing many borders. Not surprisingly, not every dumpling type is to be found in the Duke City, although you just might be surprised at just how many types of dumplings you can find within our little slice of heaven on Earth. Your veritable “around the world in fifty dumplings” tour should start at Ming Dynasty where the dim sum menu showcases such Chinese dumpling treasures as crab Rangoon, har gow (shrimp dumplings), shumai (steamed dumplings stuffed with prawns), sausage buns, steamed barbecue pork buns, shrimp stuffed bean curd and several others prepared so authentically and so well you might swear you’re in Hong Kong. For a dumpling tour of Japan you…

AlbuquerqueAsianClosed in 2023Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoRating: ExcellentVietnamese

May Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:55 PM

There are perhaps thousands of examples throughout the Duke City of immigrants whose path to the American dream involved rising above humble origins and surmounting extraordinary circumstances to achieve success. Those challenges are exacerbated by the fact that many of them arrived in America as refugees from war-torn nations with nary a modicum of English. One such example is Liem Nguyen, who along with wife Kim founded the May Cafe in 1992, a scant nine years after arriving in Albuquerque through a church resettlement program. Speaking almost no English, Liem, then 22 years old, enrolled in Highland High School as a ninth-grader. He didn’t know how to drive, shop at the supermarket or even catch a bus. He slept in a closet in a tiny apartment he shared with several other immigrants. Among the city’s very first Vietnamese restaurants, May Cafe wasn’t an immediate success save within the tight-knit Vietnamese community craving the tastes of home and among the servicemen at Kirtland Air Force Base who had been stationed in Vietnam and fell in love with the cuisine. It took a while before the widespread acceptance by a trepidatious general public of the alluring and theretofore mysterious flavors of Vietnam.…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2024Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenMexicanNew Mexico

B2B Garden Brewery – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“I’m a uniter, not a divider.” ~ George W. Bush, Governor of the Great State of Texas “No one wants to listen to politicians, but everyone wants to eat tacos. Tacos are the great uniter.” ~ John Fetterman, Candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania FROM B2B GARDEN BREWERY (October, 2024):  We’re sad to announce that after over 10 years, we are closing our doors. We want to thank all of you for your support and for the great times we’ve shared. Ideologically and politically, denizens of the land of the free and home of the brave seem incapable of agreeing on virtually anything, but turn the topic to tacos and there’s almost consensus. Americans love tacos! We love them to the depth and breadth and height our appetites can reach…and our appetites can reach bottomless depths, expansive breadths, dizzying heights and tremendous distances. In 2012, we loved tacos to the tune of 4.5 billion tacos consumed across the fruited plain. That’s the equivalent weight in tacos of two Empire State Buildings (775-million pounds). Our appetites surmounted the equivalent of 490,000 miles of tacos, enough–as Frank Sinatra might croon–to fly you to the moon and back. No one, it seems, loves…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2017Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoPizza

Irrational Pie – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno10:12 AM

Jethro Bodine, the country bumpkin with diverse career aspirations (brain surgeon, street car conductor, ‘double-naught’ spy, Hollywood producer, soda jerk, and bookkeeper) on the Beverly Hillbillies television comedy graduated highest in his class by a whole foot or more. You couldn’t get much past the sixth grade educated “six-foot stomach.” When a math teacher posited the theory of π r2 (pi r squared), Jethro wasn’t fooled: “Uncle Jed, them teachers is tryin’ to tell us that pie are square. Shoot, everybody knows that pie are round, cornbread are square.” Jethro isn’t the only educated person to find pi irrational. The first to do so was Swiss polymath Johann Heinrich Lambert who proved that the number π (pi) is irrational: that is, it cannot be expressed as a fraction a/b, where a is an integer and b is a non-zero integer. It’s quite possible that the only people who understand that sentence are my friends Larry McGoldrick, the professor with the perspicacious palate and Bill Resnik, a New Mexico Institute of Technology-trained mathematician. For me, all math beyond statistics is irrational; it makes absolutely no sense. I did know enough to grin like the proverbial cat who ate the canary when…

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Amerasia & Sumo Sushi – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:14 AM

Carpe Diem Sum–“seize the dim sum” at AmerAsia, the Alibi’s perennial selection for best dim sum in the city honors (diem sum, as spelled on AmerAsia’s menu is also a correct spelling). Dim sum, a Cantonese word that can be translated to “a little bit of heart,” “point of heart” and “touch the heart” has its genesis in the Chinese tea houses of the Silk Road. Weary sojourners would stop at tea houses for tea and a light snack (ergo, touch the heart). Over time, the popularity of the tasty little treasures offered at these tea houses led to larger restaurants serving dim sum meals until mid-afternoon, after which other Cantonese cuisine was made available. Today, dim sum buffets are a popular offering throughout the United States. Albuquerque’s most venerable practitioner of the traditional culinary art of dim sum is AmerAsia which has been serving Albuquerque since 1978. Though AmerAsia has been around for nearly thirty years, out of blind loyalty to Ming Dynasty we avoided trying it, reasoning there is no way anyone could serve dim sum quite as good as the popular Cantonese restaurant. Thankfully AmerAsia’s diem sum captured the unfettered affections of a Chowhound poster from Phoenix…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2022Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoRating: ExcellentSandwichVietnamese

IKrave Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno8:34 PM

Please say it isn’t so! According to Nations Restaurant News, a highly respected trade publication “a new crop of restaurant chain entrepreneurs” believes “American diners will soon embrace the Vietnamese bánh mì sandwich as the next burrito or taco.” The notion of corporate chain megaliths setting their sights on the humble banh mi should send shudders down the spine of everyone who frequents the mom-and-pop nature of the banh mi restaurants we’ve come to know and love. Imagine a phalanx of Subway-like sandwich shops creating and selling banh mi. The notion isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. One of the first chains vying to expand the presence of banh mi in the mainstream is Chipotle whose Asian-themed offshoot “ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen” features banh mi as the menu’s cornerstone. If Chipotle does for the banh mi what it did for burritos and what Olive Garden did for Italian food, there will be generations of American diners who may never experience the real thing–an authentic banh mi prepared in the traditional manner by Vietnamese weaned on banh mi. Worse, slick Madison Avenue advertisers might convince them they prefer the faux food. It’s a small consolation that it will probably take…