Gil's Thrilling (And Filling) Blog
Follow the Culinary Ruminations of New Mexico's Sesquipedalian Sybarite. 1153 Restaurant Reviews, More Than 10,900 Visitor Comments…And Counting!
Shangri-La. Eden. Paradise. Heaven on Earth. The concept of a remote and exotic utopia, a faraway haven or hideaway of idyllic beauty and tranquility, has long intrigued mankind. Paul Gauguin, the famous French post-impressionist artist …
Read More
I have a confession to make. I just don’t get anime…and can’t figure out the pokemon craze. That’s a rather starting admission for an Information Technology (IT) professional to make. Maybe I need help? …
Read More
“Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power, has that ability to comfort.” ~Norman Kolpas According to most online definitions, the term “soul food” defines the cuisine associated with African-American culture in …
Read More
Breaking a paradigm. That’s a modern corporate buzz phrase that essentially means approaching a situation or routine from a different perspective instead of the standard or typical way. In the parlance of dining out, breaking …
Read More
Announcer: “The story you are about to read is true. The menu has been changed to showcase the delicious mashup of Korean and Mexican cuisines. Roy Choi: “This is the city: Los Angeles, California. I …
Read More
“If white wine goes with fish, do white grapes go with sushi?“ – George Carlin A reader once asked Washington Post humorist Gene Weingarten what he was a snob about. His reply, “I am also …
Read More
“Ramen is a dish that’s very high in calories and sodium. One way to make it slightly healthier is to leave the soup and just eat the noodles.” ~Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto America may be …
Read More
“Careful Father, this stuff will melt your beads.” ~Lt Colonel Henry Blake, MASH 4077 Just as Hogan’s Heroes helped establish the perception many Americans (at least of my generation) had about German food, the television …
Read More
In Chinese and Vietnamese cultures, numerology is very important. If you’ve traveled extensively, you may have wondered why the term “Pho” followed by a number is so commonplace. Often these numbers are considered lucky–and not …
Read More
“And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.” ~Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Two things came to mind when my friend …
Read More
“”Vietnam. It grabs you and doesn’t let you go. Once you love it, you love it forever.” ~ Anthony Bourdain Most of us have never been to Vietnam. It’s possible, maybe likely, that most of …
Read More
By definition, many, if not most noodles are fun. No, not fun as in luxuriating in a tub filled with ramen (albeit non-edible, synthetic noodles) with real tonkatsu (pork bone) broth. Yeah, that really is …
Read More
American fashion designer Zac Posen observed that “Chefs have the ego of an actor and fashion designer combined.” In comparison to private cooks, however, chefs are as modest as a cloistered nun. In a recent …
Read More
In horse racing, the Triple Crown signifies winning all three of the sport’s most challenging thoroughbred horse races—The Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes. This is considered the greatest achieved in thoroughbred racing, a …
Read More
Shortly after “moving on up to the east side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky,” George Jefferson was uncharacteristically late returning home. Knowing George had gone to a Chinese restaurant after work, his dutiful …
Read More
According to some stereotypes, when you eat Chinese food, you’ll be hungry an hour later. That stereotype is known as the “Chinese food paradox.” One of the culprits behind that stereotype is rice, a …
Read More
“Eating slowly is good for the stomach; plowing deeply is good for the fields.” ~Vietnamese Proverb Imagine if the village of Hatch was granted a trademark that awarded it exclusive rights to the name “chile.” …
Read More
Who among us hasn’t learned at least one thing about Thai culinary heritage from The Big Bang Theory? In a 2011 episode, for example, we learned that according to Thai tradition the last morsel of …
Read More
In retrospect, the monsters and bogeymen who frightened impressionable children of my generation were pretty lame. Perhaps the most lame of them all was Frankenstein, a lumbering behemoth who walked around with his arms outstretched …
Read More
Reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson insisted a light exists in spring that’s not present at any other time of year. If you’ve ever spent a winter in the Northern Hemisphere at a latitude of 42° …
Read More
Hawkeye Pierce had a very unique (and very sarcastic) take on the Korean War: “I just don’t know why they’re shooting at us. All we want to do is bring them democracy and white bread. …
Read More
According to the United States Census Bureau, by 2016 the Asian American population–including those of multiracial, Hispanic and Latino ancestry–had reached nearly 21 million, constituting about six-percent of the Fruited Plain’s total population. As the …
Read More
While the term “Vietnamese cuisine” is broad and overarching, any attempt to pigeonhole this very diverse and eclectic culinary culture is a failure to consider its complexities and nuances. Even when culinary taxonomists compartmentalize Vietnamese …
Read More
Jim Millington, a long-time friend of this blog, contends that “there must be a bad Vietnamese restaurant somewhere on this wide earth but I have never found it.” If the Albuquerque metropolitan area is a …
Read More
Several years ago and much to the surprise of the proprietor, I ordered a durian shake at a Vietnamese restaurant. She proceeded to caution me that durian has a very powerful aroma and flavor many …
Read More
It should have been a point-counterpoint debate for the ages. My ideologically opposed and perpetually squabbling friends Carlos and Hien were arguing about the concept of American exceptionalism. Carlos took the Reaganesque position that America …
Read More
Starting with a raucous concert in 1954, the idiom “Elvis has left the building” was uttered at the conclusion of many of Elvis Presley’s concerts to encourage rabid fans to accept that no further encores …
Read More
“The branches of the aspen plum To and fro they sway How can I not think of her? But home is far away,” – Confucius According to Urban Farm Online, “plums were domesticated in China …
Read More
“Nom nom.” It sounds innocent enough. Parents–yes, including parents of four-legged fur babies–utter it in baby talk intonations to get our children to eat something, especially when that something is “good for them” but doesn’t …
Read More
You always remember your first time…and if it’s good, it may set the standard by which you’ll forever measure every other time. I was a lanky lad of nineteen, away from home for the first …
Read More
Babu: Our specials are tacos, moussaka and franks and beans. Jerry: Well, what do you recommend my good fellow? Babu:Oh, the turkey. ~”The Cafe, Seinfeld, Season 3, Episode 7 While perusing the menu at Urban …
Read More
“There is no good meat that their stupid cooks do not spoil with the sauce they make. They mix with all their stews a certain paste made of rotten prawns…which has such a pungent smell …
Read More
“No lady likes to snuggle and dine accompanied by a porcupine.” “He lit a match to check gas tank. They call him skinless Frank.” “A man, a miss, a car, a curve. He kissed the …
Read More
Many of us with a puerile sense of humor can probably recall giggling like silly school kids the first time we visited a Thai restaurant and perused a menu. We went straight into the gutter …
Read More
JP, my former boss at Intel prides himself on consistently working “half days.” If you’re thinking you’d like a job where you work only four hours a day, you’ve misinterpreted his definition of “half days.” …
Read More
Let’s get one thing straight. General Tso’s chicken is not some weird cold war Chinese one-upmanship response to Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken. In other words, China did not deliberately seek to outdo the United …
Read More