Category: James Beard Foundation (JBF) Award Nominees & Winners

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Zacatlán – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

As a naive and impressionable child with a vivid imagination, my most frightening weekly ordeal was walking home from Catechism, especially when teachings centered around the devil and his demons. For some reason we weren’t taught about a loving God. Instead it was drilled into us that if we’re not “good” we’d go to Hell.  Strangely such concepts as forgiveness and goodness were described rather abstractly while the devil (undoubtedly a progenitor of today’s elected officials) and sin were made real enough to traumatize us all.  The devil was everywhere waiting to ensnare us into sin and drag us (wailing and gnashing our teeth) into Hell. Walking home at twilight after another fire and brimstone lesson made me long for…

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Ansots Basque Cuisine – Boise, Idaho

Gil Garduno

Historian Jan Morris wrote “Basque is one of the world’s more alarming languages. Only a handful of adult foreigners, they say, have ever managed to learn it. The Devil tried once and mastered only three words – profanities, I assume.”  Ellie Ansotegui, co-owner (along with her father Dan) of Ansots Basque Cuisine in Boise, Idaho lived in Basque Country for a year where she studied the language, enhancing the intermediate proficiency she had acquired growing up in a Basque family.  Alas, she returned to her Boise hometown and without practicing it faithfully, quickly lost the additional mastery she acquired in Spain. Ellie has advanced writing, reading, listening, and speaking proficiency in Spanish.  For fear of not being understood, I didn’t…

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JAMBO CAFE – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Growing up in the 60s–the dark ages before the Internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore’s eyes and google–then spelled “googol”– represented an very large number (currently being approached by build back better spending)–even precocious children like me derived most of our knowledge of Africa from National Geographic magazines and Tarzan movies. We thought Africa was one large monolithic country comprised solely of stark, expansive deserts or lush, mysterious jungles. Africa’s indigenous people, we believed, had to compete for food with lions, tigers and hyenas, oh my. Though Africa was called “the Dark Continent,” it was truly our knowledge which was in the dark, obfuscated by stereotypes and misconceptions. The 1966 debut of Star Trek helped eliminate some of…

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El Chile Toreado – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Until 2008, the notion of gourmet culinary offerings being proffered by a mobile conveyance was unheard of.  Prior to then, food trucks were (often rightfully so) known as “roach coaches or even worse “barf buggies.”  Roach coaches were an eyesore, a medium of last resort usually parked at construction sites, manufacturing plants, public parks or basic military training bases where captive trainees had no alternative.  Roach coaches were a pure convenience with no pretense to gourmet (or even good) cuisine.  Most of them hawked simple fare such as hot dogs and tacos as well as potato chips, cigarettes, candy and chewing gum.  During the era of “convenience stores on wheels,” food trucks weren’t worried about building a brand.  Nor were…

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El Charlatan – Socorro, Texas (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Everyone should have a friend like Steve Coleman, the erudite owner of Steve’s Food Page. Not only is he a great guy and a lot of fun to spend time with, he’s a superb host and tour guide.  During a two-day sojourn to “El Chuco,” Steve not only showed us the sights, he gave me a much-needed lesson about history New Mexico and Texas share.  He explained that during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, members of the Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico were displaced to El Paso along with Oñate and the Spaniards.  Today, descendants of those Native Americans reside in a Native American Pueblo in the Ysleta section of El Paso just about three miles from El Charlatan, our…

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ELEMI – El Paso, Texas

Gil Garduno

My friend Steve Coleman, owner of the well-written and impeccably researched Steve’s Food Blog has become quite a culinary anthropologist.  Not only does he provide his readers with comprehensive reviews of restaurants throughout the fruited plain, he explores the genesis of the foods he writes about.  One of his passions is to define what constitutes El Paso style Mexican cuisine–its provenance and the cultural role that cuisine has played over the generations.  As he’s discovered, El Paso style Mexican style is still evolving and redefining itself.  Some of that has occurred organically as other cultures have influenced dynamic changes.  Evolution has also been forged by the rediscovery of ancient ingredients and cooking techniques, some of which may once have been…

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Horno Restaurant – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

By the time my Kim and I returned to New Mexico in 1995, the days of my family steam-baking chicos in hornos were long past, but she sure was intrigued by our mud and adobe outdoor ovens.  She wasn’t so much interesting in exaggerated tales of our back-breaking labors, but of the process of baking chicos in those hornos.  We explained that the process began by building a fire inside the oven and letting it burn for hours–long enough for the hornos’ mud walls and floor to acquire a thermal capacity perfect for steaming corn.  The corn isn’t inserted into the horno until all that’s left of the fire is red embers.  With the corn nestled comfortably atop the ashes,…

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Pioche Food Group – Fruitland, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Having devoured all the Tony and Ann Hillerman books centered in and around the Navajo Nation, I thought I knew quite a bit about the Diné.  That was until Brian Schwartz, an extraordinary food writer from Oklahoma, offered me his ticket to an event showcasing the talents of James Beard Best Chef – Southwest nominee Justin Pioche.  I immediately took stock of just what I knew about Navajo culinary traditions.  I knew the Navajo are widely credited with the “invention” of fry bread during their brutal internment at Bosque Redondo.  History taught me that lush Navajo peach orchards were destroyed during a scorched earth campaign by Kit Carson.  I knew from personal experience that Navajo cooks prepare the best mutton…

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Sparky’s Burgers, Barbecue & Espresso – Hatch, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

New Mexico’s Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail not only celebrates one of the Land of Enchantment’s most iconic foods, it showcases the restaurants, drive-ins, diners, dives, joints, cafes, roadside stands and bowling alleys which prepare our ubiquitous, incomparable green chile cheeseburger.  To New Mexicans, there is nothing as thoroughly soul-satisfying and utterly delicious! What elevates a burger from the ordinary to the extraordinary is taste bud awakening, tongue tingling, olfactory arousing green chile, New Mexico’s official state vegetable (even though it’s technically a fruit).  In the continually evolving mosaic that describes New Mexico’s cultural intermingling, one constant is green chile, an essential ingredient in many of our recipes and THE centerpiece of any outstanding green chile cheeseburger.  Even such corporate megaliths…

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THE LOVE APPLE – Taos, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

If the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century had had its way, the tomato might not be a ubiquitous ingredient in the cooking of many cultures today. So, just what is it about the seemingly innocuous tomato that once earned it a scurrilous reputation in the Church, the type of reputation which made it the Paris Hilton of the nightshade family? Brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors, it was initially viewed with apprehension, thought not to be edible but purely decorative–and poisonous. Leave it to the French to change that perception by ascribing aphrodisiac properties to what they called pomme d’amour or love apple. This prompted the Roman Catholic Church of the time to declare the tomato the…

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Barrio Cafe – Phoenix, Arizona

Gil Garduno

A neighborhood should never be defined solely by grids and lines on a map or by a physical area where people live.  Nor should a neighborhood be defined by areas made homogeneous by restrictive covenants.  Neither should it be defined by brick-and-mortar landmarks.  What truly makes a neighborhood is its diverse and unique characters. Some are quirky and eccentric, some are brash and loud, others are indistinct and don’t stand out, but all are essential in weaving that beautiful neighborhood tapestry, that compendium of personalities that make up a community. The 16th Street “Barrio” neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona is rich in both characters and character.  The latter is evident in the color wheel of unabashedly audacious and brash murals festooning the…