Category: Albuquerque

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Thai House – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:18 PM

American fashion designer Zac Posen observed that “Chefs have the ego of an actor and fashion designer combined.” In comparison to private cooks, however, chefs are as modest as a cloistered nun.  In a recent survey, PayScale.com, an online salary information company ranked occupations by ego size, asking 383,000 people how strongly they agree with the statement, “I am the top performer at my company for jobs similar to mine.” The highest scores were determined to reflect “either a high level of professional confidence, an inflated sense of self, or both.”  The survey revealed that a whopping forty-three percent of us strongly believe we are our company’s top performer and that men and women are equally immodest. Topping the list were private household cooks with a whopping 74 percent saying they were the very best.  Private household cooks, in fact,  edged out chief executive officers (CEOs), who routinely earn twice as much in median salary.  Chefs and head cooks ranked eighth (out of 483 occupations ranked), just ahead of bartenders.  This seems to indicate the food and drink industry is a prominent breeding ground for healthy egos.  That chefs and head cooks ranked only eighth  actually surprised the heck out…

AlbuquerqueHawaiianJapaneseNew MexicoRating: Very GoodSushi

Ohana Hut – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In horse racing, the Triple Crown signifies winning all three of the sport’s most challenging thoroughbred horse races—The Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes. This is considered the greatest achieved in thoroughbred racing, a feat accomplished only twelve times. The thespian community considers as its Triple Crown, winning a competitive Academy Award, an Emmy Award and a Tony Award in acting categories. Only twenty-two actors or actresses have earned this rare distinction. What makes winning a Triple Crown in any competitive event so exciting for fans is its rarity. It happens so infrequently that fans clamor for it to happen. At the 2015 Taste of Rio Rancho event, Street Food Blvd pulled off a Triple Crown of sorts, earning three first-place awards: best appetizer, best entrée and People’s Choice. It’s a feat no other Rio Rancho restaurant ever managed in the event’s auspicious six year existence. Considering the City of Vision is home to some of the very best restaurants in the metropolitan area (including Joe’s Pasta House, Namaste, Café Bella), that’s quite an achievement. What made this coup doubly impressive to many of the throngs in attendance is that Street Food Blvd is not a brick-and-mortar operation. It’s…

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Monica’s El Portal – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno2:33 PM

“It feels so true when I’m with you I’m free A place I go that feels like home to me It feels so true It’s time well spent when I’m with you.” ~Feels Like Home (New Mexico True) For years, as we luxuriated over steamy mugs of freshly ground coffee on lazy Sunday mornings before church, my Kim and I tuned in eagerly to New Mexico True Television, an invigorating half-hour of adventure and travel that fed the soul and captured the imagination. Hearts swelled with pride, we lived vicariously through host Michael Newman as he treked throughout our breathtaking home state. We didn’t even change the channel during commercials. Why would we? The commercials depicted even more of the Land of Enchantment. Besides providing even more intriguing staycation ideas, some of the commercials featured a catchy little ditty called “Feels Like Home,” an upbeat song originally performed by an Albuquerque band called Richmond. It’s a feel good, toe-tapping, sing-along-inspiring tune that pays tribute to New Mexico. If you’re going to have an earworm stuck in your head, it may as well be one that recounts the extraordinary beauty of the Land of Enchantment.  Sadly, the New Mexico Tourism Department…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2021Dog FriendlyFrenchGone But Not ForgottenRating: Excellent

P’Tit Louis Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:07 PM

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” –Ernest Hemingway I’ve often wondered if Ernest Hemingway would have felt at home in Taos during the “roaring twenties,” a period of dynamic artistic, societal and lifestyle upheaval. Instead of communing with the Taos Society of Artists and other inspired Bohemian minds, Hemingway spent much of the decade in Paris, a city whose own liberal attitudes attracted poets, painters and writers from throughout the world. Paris was a vibrant city which drew many expats from the so-called “lost generation” of cynical young people disillusioned with the materialism and individualism prevalent in society at the time. Paris was not only a relatively inexpensive city in which to live, unlike America it did not have a prohibition against alcohol. The American expatriates–F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein among them–would gather at cafes to discuss their work and drink until their money ran out. Much of Hemingway’s most productive writing, in fact, took place in cafes which he visited with his characteristic blue notebooks, pencils and a pocket knife…

2022 James Beard Foundation - "Best Chef - Southwest" SemifinalistAlbuquerqueAmericanClosed in 2022Diners Drive-Ins and DivesFood Network Eats New MexicoGone But Not ForgottenJames Beard Foundation (JBF) Award Nominees & WinnersRating: ExcellentSandwich

Bocadillos Slow Roasted: A Sandwich Shop – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:19 AM

The Food Network’s television cameras just love Chef Marie Yniguez who’s been showcased on not one, not two, not even three, but four of its prime-time programs. Aficionados of her cooking will tell you that in three of those programs she even upstaged Guy Fieri, the spiky-coiffed chef-glitterati.  Marie is a larger-than-life personality whose irreverent sense of humor, Burque pride and charisma can’t be contained within the small screen.  It’s inevitable that some network executive will someday make a movie of her life.  The question is who would play her.  Lady Gaga?  Nah, not enough personality.  Meryl Streep?  Ditto and then some.  Jennifer Lopez?  Getting closer.  The truth is, only Marie Yniguez can play Marie Yniguez. There’s no question Marie has led a very (to put it mildly) interesting life.   Her childhood in Hurley, New Mexico, a hardscrabble mining town where hard-working people owed their souls to the company store, imbued her with a work ethic which has served her well.  At age ten, her family moved to Albuquerque where five years later, a formative experience at a part-time job gave her the drive to persevere and surmount criticism.  A short-sighted supervisor who told her she’d never be more than…

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Modern General – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:47 AM

“I went to a general store but they wouldn’t let me buy anything specific.” ~Steven Wright While nay-sayers may regard New Mexico as an anachronism–stuck in a time warp somewhere between Victorian times and the Happy Days of the Fonz and Richie Cunningham–there are artifacts of the “good old days” for which I wax nostalgic.  Among those artifacts is a real general store, a concept largely relegated to history in this age of instant gratification through internet shopping.  In small villages, general stores were not only stocked with such necessities as groceries, dry goods and hardware, they were quite literally the social center of the community.  Some of my happiest memories as a gangling teen in Peñasco emanate from my time working at the circa 1955 sheet metal Quonset hut which still houses Sahd’s General Store. It’s likely many new happy memories will be created at Modern General, a mercantile-cum-restaurant slash juice bar slash bakery inspired by the classic general store.  Modern General was conceived by the indefatigable Erin Wade, the perspicacious whirling dervish behind Vinaigrette.  Modern General’s mission is “to bring beauty, health, and delight into our customers’ every day lives.   We offer food that is delicious and nourishing,…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyFood TruckNew MexicoPizzaRating: Very Good

Punchy’s Wood-Fired Pizza – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:16 PM

In the parlance of the pugilist, “punchy” is synonymous with punch-drunk, the result of having been battered violently by an opponent. You know, like Rocky Balboa after a few rounds with Apollo Creed. Don’t ever try to correct the family of Giordano Bruno (1905-1992) if they insist on a different definition. They’ll tell you Grandpa Giordano, the family patriarch, earned the nickname Punchy because of his punching prowess as a Golden Gloves boxing phenom. He could really pack a punch they say, winning 80 bouts and going undefeated during his career. More often than not, it was his hapless opponents who were left loopy after a fusillade of lefts, rights and uppercuts.  Punchy’s talents weren’t limited to the squared circle. He could really cook some knockout Italian dishes, too. When he emigrated to Chicago from Milan, Italy in the 1920s he brought with him family recipes from Tuscany and Naples, the birthplaces of his parents—and the latter, also the birthplace of modern day pizza as we know it. Punchy worked as a chef in Chicago then New York (and if you can make it there…) before moving to New Mexico in 1943. During Sunday family get-togethers, Punchy taught his grandchildren…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2019Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenMexicanNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Outstanding

Sophia’s – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno10:01 AM

Exterior signage for Dennis Apodaca’s new restaurant venture sports the name of the previous tenant, a short-lived eatery named MIXX. In a February blurb announcing Dennis’s return, the Albuquerque Journal called his new venture “REMIXX.” A handwritten note scrawled on the front door, however, informs you that you’ve arrived at “Sophia’s – that you knew & loved on 4th St. NW.” Not taking any chances, Yelp lists entries for both “REMIXX by Sophia’s Place” and “Sophia’s.” So which is it? Ask Dennis and he’ll tell you that despite what the sign says, his restaurant is a relaunch of Sophia’s, the celebrated restaurant that made him one of Albuquerque’s most talked-about and respected chefs. “I’d rather spend money on serving great food than replacing a sign” he laughs. Dennis points out that the exterior signage for Trois Mec, one of the most revered fine-dining restaurants in Los Angeles, still bears the name of its predecessor, Raffalo’s Pizza. That’s entirely by design, the point being that despite a constantly changing five-course tasting menu approaching a C-note price point, the restaurant is unpretentious, its focus being on the food not peripherals such as signage. The term “unpretentious” probably fits Dennis more than it…

AlbuquerqueChineseDim SumNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)

It Dim Sum – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:22 PM

Shortly after “moving on up to the east side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky,” George Jefferson was uncharacteristically late returning home.  Knowing George had gone to a Chinese restaurant after work, his dutiful wife Weezy asked neighbor Tom Willis what Chinese restaurant George might have visited.  Ever the gourmand, Tom asked what style of Chinese food George liked then proceeded to rattle off five different types of traditional Chinese cuisine available in the neighborhood: Mandarin, Sichuan, Hunan, Cantonese and Shandong.  Until that very moment I had no idea there were so many different styles of Chinese cuisine, wrongly believing there was only Chinese food period. That’s pretty much what most Americans believed even back in the 80s when that particular Jefferson’s episode aired…especially those of us who didn’t live in a populous, cosmopolitan city.  In our naivete, we also believed such favorites as crab Rangoon, orange chicken, chop suey and even the ubiquitous fortune cookie to have originated in China.  It didn’t dawn on us that many Chinese dishes were “invented” to cater to American tastes.  We also had no idea how significantly Chinese dishes in China differed from those adapted to American tastes.   Some of us even…

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Burque’s Burgers & Dawgs – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:40 PM

A 2016 quality of life survey conducted by the city of Albuquerque revealed that denizens of the Duke City are split pretty much down the middle when it comes to the nickname “Burque” (which, by the way, is NOT pronounced “burr-key” though you’ll be forgiven if you can’t roll your r’s).  28-percent of respondents viewed the sobriquet favorably while 28-percent had an unfavorable impression and 35% were neutral.  Residents of the Northeast Heights viewed the nickname less favorably than did dwellers of North Valley, downtown, west side and UNM areas. The survey did not address former Mayor Marty Chavez’s 2007 branding efforts to replace Burque with a more generic city nickname, “The Q.” In response to Mayor Chavez’s perceived folly, a grassroots cultural resistance movement arose.  Sporting plain red tee-shirts emblazoned with the words “¡SOY DE BURQUE!, or “I am from Burque,” the movement’s members garnered worldwide support, particularly from former Burqueños.  In an interview with The Alibi, the movement’s founder declared, “The Q, more than anything, represents not having a voice. Burque–it’s a name that has been given by the people over generations, and it’s always sort of existed. The Q, the fact that they’re trying to make it…

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Rusty Taco – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno8:18 PM

In 2015, food critic Mike Sutter embarked on a quest Don Quixote would envy when he ate at a different taco joint in Austin, Texas every day for an entire year. During his 365-day adventure, he consumed a whopping 1,600 tacos. When he moved from Austin to San Antonio, he embarked on a similar venture and not even life-altering thyroid cancer and its associated treatments and surgery could stay this critic from his appointed quest. He had surgery on a Tuesday and was back on the taco trail on Friday. Asked what his favorite taco was, he singled out a simple carnitas taco with a balance of lean, fatty and crispy bits and salsa–not some elegant or complicated creation of sundry fusion ingredients. That’s the way it goes with tacos sometimes. My Kim prefers the simplicity of carnitas, but will occasionally go wild and order tacos al pastor. Her mad scientist of a husband will invariably order the weirdest tacos on the menu and tends to find classics such as carnitas tacos boring.  Tacos offer such a potential for diversity that there’s bound to be a taco for every taste…and for every level of weirdness.  In Austin where Mike Sutter…