Category: Albuquerque

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2009New Mexican

Sabroso’s – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno9:37 AM

From the moment they first set foot in the Land of Enchantment, some people just “get it” or perhaps more precisely, New Mexico gets to them.  It weaves its preternatural spell and stirs something deeply in those open enough to its calling.  D. H. Lawrence said it best, “In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico one sprang awake, a new part of the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way to a new.” Other people don’t get it–and maybe they never will.  In the early 1980s while attending the University of New Mexico, I encountered several “dormitory rats” who whined incessantly that “there’s nothing to do or see in New Mexico.”  I befriended some of them, determined to help them discover the Land of Enchantment they were perhaps too close-minded to see.  That usually entailed a day trip or two to the north-central mountains of New Mexico, but not to tourist laden Taos or Santa Fe. Northern New Mexico is a spectacular canvass on which God painted perhaps the most awe-inspiring scenery in the state.  Two break-taking drives, the High Road to Taos and the Enchanted Circle–are well known, but an even more wondrous peregrination starts…

AlbuquerqueAmericanClosed in 2013Gone But Not Forgotten

Coyote Diner – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:04 PM

Restaurant critics, whether we write online reviews or are published in print somewhere, must think we’re so smart.  We use polysyllabic (there’s one) words when a more prosaic (another one) word will do.  We endeavor (yet another one, but you get the picture) to wax eloquent every time we describe something we obviously like or disdain. Here’s one critic who’s eating humble pie courtesy of Erica Ruth, an erudite (I can’t stop myself) Duke City diner who, in recommending a favorite restaurant, gave me one of the best reviews I’ve read in a long time. When Erica wrote to me and told me of an “amazing hidden treasure in the Heights” serving the “best burgers I have had in Albuquerque,” I asked her what it was about those burgers that made them the best.  Here’s her reply. “I think they’re great because they’re one, the perfect size–not so thick that you can’t take a big bite out of them, and not so skimpy in width that the bun envelopes it.   Two, they are always cooked to perfection. I am pretty sure the patties are hand formed. When you order them, they don’t have any filler, so they ALMOST fall apart–almost…

AlbuquerqueCajun

Mardi Gras Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:47 PM

Over the centuries, Mardi Gras has evolved in America from a sedate French Catholic tradition to a hedonist’s holiday in which revelers indulge–and overindulge–the day before Ash Wednesday.  Every year Mardi Gras celebrations lure millions of rollickers and revelers to New Orleans where Mardi Gras is celebrated in grand scale.  Extravagant parades, masked balls, raucous convivality and copious consumption are hallmarks of the Crescent City event where shouts of “Laissez les bon temps rouler” (Let the good times roll) resound from rooftops and alleyways. Laissez les bon temps rouler is also now the resounding sentiment from Albuquerque’s South Valley where in February, 2009, a new Cajun restaurant opened for business.  Now Duke City diners can celebrate “Fat Tuesday” five days a week instead of once a year.  Appropriately, Albuquerque’s newest Cajun eating emporium is named the Mardi Gras Grill. Situated on the southeast intersection of Avenida Caesar Chavez and Broadway, the Mardi Gras Grill is an example of a neighborhood revitalization and community development program that is working.  The South Broadway neighborhood was once among the city’s most undesirable with substance abuse and gang violence a thriving part of the fabric of the neighborhood. Proprietor Josh Salaz is proud of his…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2009Gone But Not ForgottenNew Mexican

The Chili Stop Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno7:12 PM

Over the years it’s been my experience that almost invariably, New Mexican restaurants which violate traditional New Mexican grammar don’t prepare the object of their grammatical faux pas very well.  The grammatical transgression of which I speak is forgetting the “i” before “e” rule and committing the piquant peccadillo of spelling New Mexico’s official state vegetable with two “i’s” and no “e’s.” It’s entirely forgivable that chile is technically a fruit, albeit one which packs an incendiary capsaicin punch, but like many New Mexicans, I feel personally insulted when presented with a menu offering “chili.” That grammatical malapropism wasn’t lost on Calvin Trillin, a legendary American journalist and novelist known for his humorous writings about food and eating.   In an October, 2002 article on Gourmet magazine entitled “Bowlful of Dreams,” he described a visit to the New York City “New Mexican” restaurant Los Dos Molinos: “One of the places I’d heard about, Los Dos Molinos, seemed to have been designed for citizens who have gotten about ten years past spring break at Daytona Beach but had not lost their taste for specialties like a “Kick-Ass Pitcher” of Margaritas. Although the red and green chile served as a dip with the…

AlbuquerqueBuffetClosed in 2020Gone But Not ForgottenSalad

Sweet Tomatoes – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:26 AM

In the early 1980s, Albuquerque native and Tokyo Olympian Buster Quist (whose brother Terry I worked for at the time) launched within the Coronado mall, one of the Duke City’s very first salad bars.  The salad bar concept was a few years ahead of its time and the restaurant venture went belly up—a condition portly Americans have, not coincidentally, experienced en masse (no pun intended) over the years. Salad has been a popular dietary staple for a long time, but only in recent years have creative cuisine crafters added imagination, flair and flavor to what used to be bland and unimaginative greenery.  The lack of imagination in crafting salads has always reminded dieters that the word “diet” is simply “die” without the letter “t.”  Today restaurants such as Sweet Tomatoes have added a creative flair that includes high calorie ingredients that can be diet devastating. At Sweet Tomatoes, a burgeoning franchise, it will take self-discipline to steer clear of such diet destroying delicacies as the chocolate chip muffins, chocolate muffins, warm apple cobbler, Asiago focaccia and tomato focaccia bread, all of which are not only tempting, but pretty good. Sweet Tomatoes lets you craft every salad combination conceivable with a…

AlbuquerqueSoul Food

Almost Gourmet Soul Food – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno7:01 PM

NOTE:  Although the Almost Gourmet Soulfood restaurant is now closed, owner Genice Monroe remains in the catering business, working out of a commercial kitchen in the city.  She is working on a Web site from which you will be able to order the fantastic soul food you fell in love with at her restaurant.  Call Genice at (505) 353-0799 for all your catering needs. One of my favorite catechism words, concupiscence, might best describe my passion for soul food.  Concupiscence of the body, I was taught, is “the blind tendency of your feelings and animal appetites to seek satisfaction, regardless of intelligence and reason.” Having lived for nearly eight years on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and within short driving distance of New Orleans, we became intimately, even passionately, familiar with soul food.  It was among our very favorites of any cuisine. To quell our yearnings for soul food (the more authentic the better), we often frequented less than savory” neighborhoods which even Mother Teresa herself might have avoided.  Such “boldly go where no white man has gone before” excursions resulted in our introduction to, among other things, the pit barbecuing of goats, an experience which reminded me somewhat of the matanzas with…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2010Gone But Not ForgottenItalian

Nana’s Trattoria & Pizzeria – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:17 AM

What’sa matta you, hey! Gotta no respect, whatta you think you do, Why you looka so sad? It’s-a pretty bad, it’s-a not-a nice-a place, Ah, shaddap you face! Joe Dolce will just have to forgive me for the liberties I took with the lyrics to his worldwide 1980 number one song Shaddap You Face. Slightly altered, those lyrics express my sentiments when the airwaves are polluted with saccharinely mushy, accordion accented commercials for Italian chain restaurants–commercials like the one in which a small lad escorts his elderly uncle from Italy to Olive Garden for a birthday dinner. You can almost imagine the dumbfounded, aged paisano muttering “stunad” under his breath as he chokes down pasta and longs for the return trip home. Sadly, when Albuquerque’s citizenry thinks Italian food nowadays, they think the Olive Garden, Buca di Beppo, Zio’s Italian Kitchen, Johnny Carino’s and even Pizza Hut. The promise of Italian ethnicity–even the inauthentic parody pitifully proffered by the chain restaurants–remains a marketable concept that draws hungry hordes. Albuquerque, like much of America, has settled for a parade of institutionalized pre-cooked, frozen-shipped Italian food mediocrity. Thousands of the Italian emigrants who were processed through Ellis Island must be gesticulating wildly…

AlbuquerqueAnnouncements

Let Us Eat Soup – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:15 PM

Genesis 25:34 recounts the story of Isaac’s two sons Esau and Jacob.  Talk about a sibling rivalry.  Coming home from an unsuccessful hunt one day, Esau was exhausted and famished.  The aroma of hot, steaming red lentil soup filled the air and he would do anything to have some.   His brother Jacob, a crafty schemer, agreed to give his brother some soup in exchange for the birthright to which the elder son was entitled.  Esau acquiesced. There are two things about this popular Old Testament story that have always perplexed me. (1)  Just how good can soup possibly be that someone would renounce a birthright to have some?  On Saturday, January 24th, 2009, I was privileged to serve as a judge in the tenth annual Souper Bowl where I found out just how good soup can be.  The 2009 Souper Bowl, Albuquerque’s foremost tasting competition, featured more than thirty of Albuquerque’s finest restaurants showcasing their very best soups and desserts.  More importantly, it served as the Roadrunner Food Bank’s premier fund-raising event. On an overcast winter day when the cloudy grey skies reflected the mood of uncertainty and anxiousness surrounding the economy, the Duke City needed comfort food–the warmth and…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2012Gone But Not ForgottenGreek

Hello Gyro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno10:04 PM

Many scholars and historians consider  the ancient Greeks to be the germinal culture and progenitor of Western civilization as we know it.  Greek civilization has been immensely influential in the arts and sciences, politics and language, philosophy and education.  It may surprise you then to learn that what many consider the archetypal Greek dish is, in chronological terms, a relative newcomer to one of the world’s oldest civilizations. There is no historical source to prove definitively that the gyros were first made any earlier than the 1950s when they are believed to have been invented in Livadia, a city in central Greece.  The first souvlaki on a wooden stick, by the way, was also invented in Livadia at about the same time. As it has done throughout its history, the venerable Greek culture shared its new creation with the rest of the world.  The Chicago area was the first American region introduced to gyros more than forty years ago.  Their popularity has grown like wildfire throughout the United States. Gyros refers not only to the thin, stacked slices of meat that rotate slowly on upright spit, but to the cooking process itself.  In Greek, gryos actually means “a full turn,” a reference…

AlbuquerqueBakeryBreakfastClosed in 2012DonutsGone But Not ForgottenSpecialty

Paradise Donuts – Bosque Farms, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:41 PM

Though often boorish and crude, America’s favorite everyman philosopher Homer Simpson is prone to occasional bouts of insight. Who can argue with such Homeric sagacity as, “donuts, is there anything they can’t do.” At first browse that statement may appear clouded, make that glazed, but it’s a statement replete with credibility–and not solely with police officers. Cultural anthropologist Paul R. Mullins posits that one of the best ways to examine a culture is by looking at its eating habits and regional cuisines. He reasons that Americans don’t really have a culinary culture we can call our own, that the American culinary experience is an amalgam of appropriated customs and cooking techniques. The best evidence of this, in his mind, is the donut whose lineage can be traced to the Chinese, French, Germans and Dutch. In his terrific tome Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut, Mullins examines the evolution of the donut and juxtaposes the rise and fall of its popularity against the development of America’s consumer culture. He exploits the negative stereotypes and perceptions surrounding donuts (think indolent cops and Homer Simpson’s obesity), detailing how the donut has been equally regaled and reviled, the latter often without merit. When…

AlbuquerqueThai

Mai Thai Thai Cuisine – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno7:34 PM

When my buddy Bill Resnik invited me to try a new restaurant called Mai Thai, I immediately wondered if Albuquerque was experiencing a misguided retro renaissance to days gone by when kitschy Polynesian themed night clubs and restaurants were in vogue. For those of you too young to remember, in the 1960s, 70s and even early 80s, Americans held a huge fascination for the South Seas, an interest propelled by veterans returning from the Pacific theater after the second war to end all wars.  Presiding over the “Tiki” movement was an entrepreneur named Victor Bergeron who founded a popular Polynesian themed restaurant chain named Trader Vic’s.  His restaurants provided temporary departures into escapism replete with waterfalls, torches, carved figures and bamboo huts, all designed to evoke an island ambience. Bergeron is also renown for the invention of a vibrant and refreshing rum cocktail called the Mai Tai.  Introducing the Mai Tai to the Hawaiian Islands inspired the slogan for his entire business, “Tahitian for the very best Mai Tai.” Alas, the restaurant Bill invited me to has nothing to do with a faux Polynesian adult beverage and doesn’t even have a liquor license.  It’s also not named “Mai Tai,” but…