Category: Asian

AlbuquerqueChinese

ABC Chinese Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno4:03 PM

NOTE:  The site which housed ABC Chinese for nearly four decades is now the home of ABC Cajun Seafood & Noodle House. Hungry sojourners venturing east on Menaul between Wyoming and Eubank will discover two of the dining options on this stretch are among Albuquerque’s elder statesmen in the Duke City’s Chinese restaurant community. You’ll first espy Ho Lo Ma, a venerable institution launched in 1972 and well on its way to a half-century of serving the Duke City. A couple blocks later lies a comparative newcomer named ABC Chinese which has been in business only since 1988. Both restaurants are anachronisms with many of the stereotypical trappings that typified Chinese restaurants in the 1960s and ’70s. Though showing their…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2022Gone But Not ForgottenJapaneseRating: ExcellentSushi

Magokoro Japanese Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:20 AM

Emeril Lagasse, the jovial master of the culinary catchphrase, has been known to exhort his studio audience to “feel the love” as he adds a dash or two of something special to a dish. Indeed, love is that extra ingredient many chefs say they add to make everything they prepare taste better. To these chefs, cooking with love is not a labor of love because the gratification they receive is as intrinsically nourishing and pleasing as their cuisine is pleasurable and fulfilling to the diners who partake of it. Asian cultures have known for time immemorial that cooking is more than providing sustenance to sate hunger. They believe cooking and eating can create spiritual awareness and foster community as well…

AlbuquerqueAsianClosed in 2015Gone But Not ForgottenJapaneseNew MexicoSushiThaiVegetarian/Vegan

Loving Vegan – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno9:22 PM

My adovada adoring amigo Ruben likened the irony to an episode of Seinfeld. Two weeks into his experiment with an ostensibly healthier vegan diet, he was craving sushi and needed his sushi-specific pangs of hunger sated. No sooner had we finished a very satisfying sushi soiree at Albuquerque’s only vegan sushi restaurant than our waitress apprised us the restaurant would be closing for good two days later. “Serenity now,” we cried, mimicking Frank Costanza when faced with a stressful situation. It just didn’t seem fair that we would make such a delicious discovery only to have plans for future meals dashed. Loving Vegan gave it the “old college try,” initially launching in June, 2012 on Coors Blvd before relocating in…

AlbuquerqueAsianClosed in 2019Gone But Not Forgotten

Asian Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno8:30 AM

In “My Fair Ernest T. Bass,” one of the most hilarious episodes ever of the 1960s television classic, The Andy Griffith Show, Sheriff Andy Taylor tried to pass off Ernest T. as a cultured gentleman. By teaching him manners, Andy hoped Ernest T., a bumpkinly, rock-throwing, havoc-wreaking hillbilly, would find a girl and learn to behave in polite society. The expectations Andy had for the slovenly Ernest T. were an example of the Pygmalion Effect, a phenomenon positing that the greater the expectations placed upon people, the better they will perform. It’s a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. Could this phenomenon have been in play when Albuquerque city councilor Ray Garduño (no relation) and other civic leaders came up with a…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2025Gone But Not ForgottenThai

Thai Tip – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:43 PM

Although short in stature, gregarious Tippewan “Tip” Sherrod, for whom Thai Tip is named, is as dynamic and passionate a restaurateur as you’ll meet in Albuquerque. If she’s not inundated with hungry patrons, she might take time out to recount her background as a midwife in her native Thailand as she extols the healthy qualities of Thai food. While she takes your order she might just tell you about the curative and healthful properties of your particular choice. 30 April 2005: The Thom Kha Kai (a traditional Thai soup based on coconut milk with the sweet scented spicing that comes from lemon grass and galganal, (a root similar to ginger), for example, is good for high-blood pressure. It’s also good…

AlbuquerqueAsianChineseClosed in 2020Gone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico

China City – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno8:53 PM

The Claw: Actually the only girl we want is Princess Ingrid. Maxwell Smart: Then why did you abduct the others? The Claw: Unfortunately, Mr. Smart, all Americans look alike to us. ~Get Smart Leave it to iconic filmmaker Mel Brooks to turn cultural stereotypes around to create a hilarious interchange between The Claw, the head of the Asian arm of the criminal spy agency KAOS, and Smart, the bumbling American secret agent who fights on behalf of the forces of goodness and niceness. Many of us who followed Twitter commentary after the United Sates Women’s National Soccer team played to a draw against North Korea shrank with embarrassment at comments which evinced the fact that there are still people who…

AlbuquerqueAsianNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Thai

Bangkok Bite – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno1:46 PM

Several years ago during an ice-breaker introduction at project team meeting, we were all asked to introduce ourselves and explain where we were from. Introducing myself as being from Massaman Curry, New Mexico drew absolutely no reaction, leading me to conclude two things: (1) my colleagues knew absolutely nothing about the Land of Enchantment and probably wondered if I needed a passport to get to Phoenix; and (2) despite one of our corporate values being “risk-taking,” none of them had ever dined at a Thai restaurant. These conclusions were reaffirmed during a break when one colleague commented about all the strangely named places in “Mexico,” citing Tacos (Taos?), Captain (Capitan?) and Lost Curses. When an introductory situation calls for giving…

AlbuquerqueJapaneseNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Sushi

Nagomi Japanese Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno8:30 PM

Everyman philosopher Homer Simpson once posed the profound existential question “Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do?” One thing at which donuts seem especially adept is ensnaring the hearts and affections of youth—and not just American youth. The Huffington Post reported recently that in Japan, “the younger generation is increasingly eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts and McDonald’s, not rice.” Fast food chains such as the aforementioned Krispy Kreme and McDonald’s as well as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Domino’s Pizza and others have become ubiquitous in Japan—much to the detriment of traditional Japanese culinary traditions, many of which are closely linked to family relations. The popularity of fast food is the likely culprit for the steep decline in annual rice consumption across the…

AlbuquerqueBurgersChineseNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Good

Lucky Boy – Albuquerque, New Mexican

Gil Garduno1:03 AM

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…

AsianClosed in 2016Gone But Not ForgottenLaoThaiVietnamese

Mekong Ramen House – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:51 PM

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…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2015Gone But Not ForgottenVietnamese

Viet Q – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno9:55 PM

“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…