Category: Albuquerque

AlbuquerqueBakeryNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Rude Boy Cookies – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:45 PM

Sometimes me thinks ‘what is a friend.’ And then me say “Friend is someone to share the last cookie with.” ~The Cookie Monster NOTE:  In November, 2024 Rude Boy Cookies closed its doors at its central location across from the University of New Mexico after dealing with a series of problems including break-ins, vandalism, and even armed robbery.  Owners indicate they are looking for a new location to open up their bakery.  In the meantime, cookie aficionados can visit the Rude Boy Cookie location at 2500 12th St NW, Unit E, Ste 3. With whom would you share your last cookie? For me the answer is easy. I’d share my last cookie with my friend Darren, the delightful younger brother…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2017Gone But Not ForgottenItalianPizzaSandwich

Bricklight Dive – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

If we really are what we eat, I’m fast, cheap and easy. Fast, cheap and easy. That would certainly describe the stereotypical college diet, especially for freshmen. On their own for the first time, freshmen eat what they want when they want it. They load up their trays with junk food in heaping helpings so mountainous it would make Dagwood Bumstead envious. They fuel marathon study sessions with sugary snacks. Exercise consists of sixteen-ounce curls, clicking the remote and fork lifts. It’s no wonder the “freshman fifteen” myth–the belief that many college students pack on 15 pounds during their first year at school–exists. A study out of Oregon State University concluded that college students are not eating enough fruits, vegetables…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyItalianNew MexicoPizzaRating: Excellent

Piatanzi – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:40 AM

“Italy is an illusion, indeed, a mirage, the stuff of wishes.” ~Mario Luzi In the 1996 motion picture Big Night, two Italian restaurants across the street from one another operate in diametric opposition to one another both philosophically and in practice. One is enormously successful because it gives customers what they want and expect (even though savvy diners would consider the culinary fare mediocre and uninspired). In the other restaurant, the chef is a perfectionist who will labor all day to create a perfect dish and becomes exasperated when diners don’t recognize the authentic culinary art he creates, preferring “Americanized” Italian food instead. You might think the American dining public would prefer the latter and reject the former. Our inaugural…

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 the southeast quadrant of the city named for him. Though there is a lot to see throughout the restaurant, the…

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. The premise of Restaurant: Impossible is that within two days and on a budget of $10,000, Irvine will transform a…

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 most busy thoroughfares (though not quite as busy as Fourth Street which in 1954, was already seventeen years removed from…

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, was viewed as an ungodly preoccupation with temporal and corporeal pleasures at the expense of spirituality. Church leaders of the…

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 1,500 breweries in the planning stage. According to the Brewers Association, as of 2013 the craft beer industry experienced double-digit…

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 absence of a true Kosher-style deli, the type of which were born in the Jewish enclaves of New York City…

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 Burger established a presence at a 3,000 square-foot space on Avanyu Plaza on 12th Street near the Indian Pueblo Cultural…

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. Until the 20th century and the rapid cultural changes wrought by the postmodern period, music also bridged the generations. Family…