Category: Albuquerque

AlbuquerqueNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Cervantes Restaurant & Lounge – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:35 PM

In 1706, a group of Spanish colonists were granted permission by King Philip of Spain to establish a new villa on the banks and in the valley of the Rio del Norte. The colonists chose a spot “in a place of good fields, waters, pastures, and timber, distant from the villa of Santa Fe about twenty-two leagues.” They named the new settlement La Villa de Alburquerque in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain, Fernandez de la Cueva, Duque de Alburquerque.” A portrait of el Duque de Alburquerque hangs prominently just above the mantle at Cervantes Restaurant & Lounge in…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2017Food Network Eats New MexicoGone But Not ForgottenLatin AmericanNew MexicoRating: OutstandingRestaurant Impossible

Pasion Latin Fusion – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:19 PM

“In my experience, food and passion always intertwine. Passion is food for the soul’s mood at any particular time.” Tammy Mollai Robert Irvine, host of the Food Network’s Restaurant: Impossible show has some nerve! In an episode which first aired in March, 2014, the tough-talking British mesomorph had the audacity to tell America that Pasion Latin Fusion wasn’t the beautiful, graceful swan with which many of us had fallen in love. Although he didn’t directly call Pasion an ugly duckling paddling about aimlessly, Irvine certainly intimated that things at Pasion weren’t as rosy as some of us may have thought.…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyNew MexicanNew MexicoNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Good

Sadie’s Dining Room – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno4:02 AM

Albuquerque and Sadie’s Dining Room have come a long way since 1950. Back then the Duke City’s population was 96,815, up 173% from 1940. Sadie Koury, the oldest child of Lebanese immigrants, was four years away from launching her first Albuquerque restaurant. Located on Second and Osuna, the first Sadie’s was housed in a Lilliputian edifice not much bigger than the restrooms at the Fourth Street restaurant which today bears her name. The Duke City was much more pastoral in the early 50s and Sadie’s restaurant was but a diminutive nine-stool diner on what was then one of the city’s…

AlbuquerqueFrenchNew MexicoRating: Excellent

Le Troquet Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:29 PM

Pope Gregory the Great was a prolific writer canonized as a saint and recognized as a “doctor of the church.” Among musicians, singers, students and teachers, he is revered as a patron saint, a heavenly advocate who intercedes on their behalf. Among gluttons of the Middle Ages, however, the supreme pontiff was reviled. In his treatise Morals on the Book of Job, Pope Gregory essentially condemned them to Hell, a denouncement reflecting the strict austerity of the times. For gluttons, the unpardonable sin was in deriving too much pleasure from eating. Eating, or more precisely the pleasurable overindulgence in food,…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBar & GrillClosed in 2019Gone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico

Bosque Brewing Company – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:38 PM

NOTE: The Bosque Brewing Company has six locations including two in Las Cruces and one in Bernalillo.  Only the location in San Mateo reviewed here has closed. In 1978, the number of breweries across the fruited plain had fallen to an all-time, post-Prohibition low of 89. That year President Jimmy Carter signed into law, a bill that legalized home brewing on a national level. Since the craft brewing market began to pick up steam in the mid- to late-1980s there has been no surcease in sight. Today, there are more than 2,500 breweries operating across the United States with another…

AlbuquerqueRating: GoodSandwich

DG’s Deli – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:23 PM

“There are sandwich shops in New York which offer the nobility and gentry a choice of no less than 100 different sandwiches, all of them alluring and some of them downright masterpieces.” H.L. Mencken In conversations with trusted gastronomes about what the Albuquerque area dining scene is most direly lacking, it’s not Basque cuisine, Russian food, Low-Country cooking or the food of any other race or ethnicity that’s most often mentioned. Surprisingly, what my esteemed colleagues believe is most desperately needed in the Duke City is a big city deli–and not just any kind of deli. My colleagues lament the…

AlbuquerqueBurgersNew MexicoNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Very Good

Laguna Burger (66 Pit Stop) – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno8:31 AM

In 2016 and 2017 my review of the Laguna Burger was the most frequently visited post on Gil’s Thrilling…  In 2015 and 2014, only one restaurant (Down N’ Dirty Seafood Boil) received more blog visits than Laguna Burger.  If even a small number of the visitors to the review actually also visited the restaurant, that’s thousands of visitors to Laguna Burger.  It’s probably safe to assume hundreds of thousands of visitors who haven’t read Gil’s Thrilling review have made their way to one of the four Laguna Burger locations, three of which are definitely off-the-beaten path.  In November, 2017, Laguna…

AlbuquerqueKoreanRating: Excellent

Arirang Oriental Market – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno5:01 PM

“Cuisine is the tactile connection we have to breathing history. History and culture offer us a vibrant living society that we taste through cuisine. All cuisine is a reflection of the society from which it emanates … in the end cuisine is the result of culture” – Clifford Wright If cuisine is the result of culture, then it can certainly be stated that music is the expressive language of that culture. Well before the advent of the written word, music was used to tell stories, impart wisdom, express ideas, share emotions and convey the history and culture of the civilization.…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2019Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoSpanishTapas

The Cellar – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:20 PM

While touring Granada, Spain during a 2013 episode of CNN’s Parts Unknown, Emmy award-winning celebrity host Anthony Bourdain bemoaned that “we will never have tapas culture in America.” Then, to emphasize his contention even further (and perhaps to rankle the ire of American foodies who frequent “tapas” restaurants across the fruited plain), he challenged viewers: “You may think you know what a tapa is, like if you’ve had small bites at some fusion hipster bar where they do a whole bunch of little plates. Yeah, that ain’t a tapa.” Bourdain, a best-selling author, world traveler, renowned chef and “poet of…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2017Gone But Not ForgottenGreekItalianMediterraneanNew MexicoPizza

Olive Branch Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno7:55 PM

The depiction of a dove in flight with an olive branch in its beak is common in early Christian art and tradition. The dove symbolizes the Holy Spirit while the olive branch is seen as a symbol of peace. Christian tradition, as chronicled in Genesis 8:11, describes a dove carrying an olive branch to signal the cessation of flooding throughout the world after forty days and forty nights of rain: “And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from…

AlbuquerqueNational ChainNew MexicoSteak

Ruth’s Chris Steak House – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno5:35 PM

During a recent Friends of Gil (FOG) outing, a newcomer asked how my Kim and I can afford to eat out as often as we do (about three times week on average). The practice of “dating your mate” is something we began half a lifetime ago when we were stationed in Mississippi and my Air Force salary was, to put it conservatively, considerably less than one-thousand dollars for every year of my life. Despite the fact that I’d been handpicked for the only job of its kind in my career field, a position with significant responsibilities usually accorded to someone…