Category: Asian

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Lucky Boy – Albuquerque, New Mexican

Gil Garduno

During its seventh season, the X Files television series in which FBI agents investigated paranormal phenomena featured an episode in which a ravenous Lucky Boy employee in California struggled against his craving for human brain matter (almost anything goes in the Golden state). The most paranormal thing about the Duke City Lucky Boy is its “east meets west” dining concept. Nowhere else in town can you order Chinese and American food so inexpensively and from the very same menu. If you think about it, ordering inexpensive Chinese and American food from within one menu shouldn’t be such an anomalous event–especially when you consider that many of Lucky Boy’s patrons are UNM students, many of whom know how to stretch a…

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Mekong Ramen House – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

In a 2009 movie entitled Ramen Girl, Abby, a wayward American girl unacculturated to life in Tokyo witnesses the radiant smiles on the faces of diners as they eat ramen and receives an epiphany that her life’s calling is to become a ramen chef. Over time she persuades a ramen restaurant’s temperamental Japanese chef to mentor her. Initially he assigns her to perform the most menial and degrading tasks, but she perseveres and eventually convinces her tyrannical mentor of her sincerity and he teaches her how to make ramen. Alas, it’s ramen with no soul until she also learns that ramen must be prepared from the heart and not from her head. Ramen with soul? Ramen chefs? Ramen prepared from…

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Viet Q – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

“When helicopters were snatching people from the grounds of the American embassy compound during the panic of the final Vietcong push into Saigon, I was sitting in front of the television set shouting, ‘Get the chefs! Get the chefs!’” Calvin Trillin, American writer, New Yorker Magazine It’s unlikely Trillin, a humorist renown for his love of food, was entirely serious about his seemingly callous reaction to the poignant imagery of thousands of South Vietnamese fleeing their besieged city. In his own inimitable way, he was using his sardonic wit to express appreciation for the exotic cuisine he loves so much. In fact, he considers the influx of Asians into American restaurant kitchens divine intervention of a sort: “God felt sorry…

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Viet Noodle – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

On April 3, 2013, University of New Mexico (UNM) Vice President for Athletics Paul Krebs sent out a very simple and succinct tweet confirming the hire of head men’s basketball coach Craig Neal. The one-word tweet read simply “Noodles.” Noodles, of course, is the sobriquet Neal received in high school on account of his tall and thin stature. The hire was very enthusiastically received by both fans and players who were witness to the strong impact he had on the program as long-time assistant coach. Albuquerque has always been a Lobo basketball crazed city and it has embraced Noodles who guided his team to 27 wins during his first season as head coach. While the UNM Lobo Club would like…

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Tara Thai Cuisine – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

The Internet is replete with personality assessments. Some–such as a personality assessment based on your choice of pizza toppings–are created by psychologists ostensibly intent on obtaining scientifically valid results, but many others are intended solely for fun and have no real validity. In the latter category, most assessments can easily be manipulated to achieve the results you want. As you’re responding to questions, an inevitable conclusion becomes transparent. You can usually tell by the way you’re answering those questions what the results will be. On the other hand, some personality assessments are baffling. While you may think you’re manipulating the results, the subsequent assessment winds up contrary to your responses. One such assessment purports to tell you which “Big Bang…

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Ichiban – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

In an episode of Friends, Joey Tribbiani starred in a commercial released only in Japan for Ichiban men’s lipstic. His friend Chandler’s response upon viewing the commercial: “he really is a chameleon.” In Japanese, the word “ichiban” means “number one” or “the best” and can be used either as a superlative (as in the highest of quality or the very best choice) or to denote precedence or numerical order. The fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan, for example, called his eldest son “number one son.” Whether meaning to denote the highest quality or precedence (ranking) among other restaurants, any dining establishment calling itself “number one” is making a pretty audacious claim. Even in a landlocked market like Albuquerque where fresh seafood…

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Gen Kai Japanese Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

In Japan, ramen is so revered that diners line up, sometimes for hours, at ramen houses for homemade noodles tangled with such ingredients as dried fish, pork and chicken. Connoisseurs make pilgrimages to a popular ramen museum in Yokohama, not the only museum dedicated to ramen, by the way. If you’re wondering how the ramen noodle product you purchased as a collegiate at the rate of ten bricks for ten dollars warrants such reverence and respect, you’re in the right ballpark, but not in the right seat. Although extremely popular throughout Japan where you can find it even in vending machines, it’s not the ubiquitous low-brow instant ramen found in Styrofoam packages which warrants such adulation and enthusiasm. That adulation…

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Izanami – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words.” ~Marcel Marceau When the Spaniards first gazed upon the setting sun as it hit the towering snow-capped mountains and appeared to bathe the slopes in a burst of red, they were so moved that the pious Conquistadors exclaimed “Sangre de Cristo,” blood of Christ. Whether bathed in the spectacular red alpenglow of sunset or in the “like yellow hair of a tigress brindled with pines” gold of autumn aspens as described by D.H. Lawrence, the Sangre de Cristos still move people deeply, stirring their very souls. The Sangre de Cristos are also spectacular when wispy amorphous clouds dance around the blanket of sky in all its magnificent…

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Asian Noodle Bar – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

In the United States, as in many western cultures, the art of slurping one’s food in public has long been an etiquette taboo. In terms of culinary faux pas, slurping falls somewhere between talking with your mouth open and belching loudly. Conversely, in Japan and other Asian countries, slurping noodles at restaurants is not only perfectly acceptable, it’s often considered a sign of appreciation being conveyed to the chef. Visit a traditional noodle bar in Japan and you’ll be surrounded by an asynchronous symphony of slurping, the audible inhalation of noodles being heartily enjoyed. If slurping noodles was an Olympic sport, the Japanese would earn gold medals (irrespective of the Russian judges) and America would place below Jamaica. Slurping among…

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Ahh! Sushi – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED: 2015)

Gil Garduno

The year was 1997. Recently thawed from a thirty year cryogenic state, Dr. Evil addressed the United Nations about his diabolical scheme to hold the world ransom: “ In a little while you’ll notice that the Kreplachistani warhead has gone missing. If you want it back, you’re going to have to pay me…one million dollars.” After the United Nations officials erupted in laughter, Dr. Evil quickly corrected himself “sorry…one hundred billion dollars.” When our mere pittance of a bill arrived after my friends Paul, Bill, Fred and I had polished off a boatload of all-you-can-eat sushi at Ahh! Sushi, the 1997 movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, quickly came to mind. Considering all we had eaten, we half expected…

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Clancy’s Pub – Farmington, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Characterized by writer Tom Wolfe as the “Me Decade” and derided by cynics as the “Disco Era,” the 1970s witnessed an explosion of copycat fast food chain restaurants and the birth of innovative fusion cuisine in many contemporary restaurants. Fusion cuisine is the inventive combination of diverse, sometimes disparate culinary traditions, techniques and ingredients to form an entirely new genre. In large metropolitan areas, particularly throughout California, the fusion of different cuisines became commonplace. Restaurants featuring the melding of French and Chinese cuisine were especially popular. Still other restaurants had their own ideas as to what constituted fusion cuisine. Instead of intermixing ingredients, they featured menus showcasing the cuisine of several genres. One such restaurant is Clancy’s Pub in Farmington,…