Category: Brazilian

AlbuquerqueBrazilianBuffetRating: Very Good

Tucanos Brazilian Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:20 AM

Many New Mexico born Hispanics of my generation grew up watching not only American “shoot ’em up” Westerns featuring rugged cowboys, rowdy rustlers, round-ups and home on the range, but the Mexican equivalent–movies featuring the exploits of charros, the traditional cowboys of central and northern Mexico. My friends and I could only dream about overcoming marauding Indians, desperate rustlers and flooding rivers as we drove our cattle to the stockyards in Abilene just like our white hat wearing heroes. It’s conceivable that in Brazil, cinematic exploits glamorized the equivalent to America’s cowboy–the gaucho, a South American cattle herder who tended his herds on the rich, verdant pampas. For generations the pampas is where the very best cattle herds in Brazil have been raised.  Like American cowboys, gauchos had their version of the chuckwagon of the old West in which horses pulled a mobile kitchen from which they were fed during roundups…and similar to cowboys, gauchos became adept at preparing meals over an open fire.  Gaucho rotisseries are renown for the delicious preparation of beef. The gaucho style of grilling, called churrasco (roughly the Portuguese equivalent of “barbecue”), is today celebrated from Rio de Janeiro to Albuquerque in Brazilian steakhouses called churrascarias. In…

Bar & GrillBrazilianClosed in 2017Gone But Not ForgottenRating: OutstandingSanta Fe

Omira Bar & Grill – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:59 PM

HOLLY: I can’t believe you’ve never taken anybody here before. JERRY: Well, I’m not really that much of a meat eater. HOLLY: . . . You don’t eat meat? Are you one of those. . . JERRY: Well, no, I’m not one of those. ~ Seinfeld “One of those!” Around my Chicago born and bred Kim and her family, that term fits me to a tee. As with many Midwestern families, my in-laws are rapacious carnivores. Their dining room table is a pantheon of pork and a bastion of beef. It’s a Bacchanalian feast of multitudinous meats. Similarly, meals at Windy City restaurants are veritable meat-fests where diners unleash their innermost meat-eating-machine. In the city’s chophouses (what every other city calls a steakhouse) heavily marbled flesh is displayed under glass, trophies of edible excess. Is it any wonder the city’s defining foods include humongous Italian beef sandwiches, slabs of Flintstonian-sized ribs and steaks the size of manhole covers. This obsession with meat isn’t solely a Midwestern phenomena. People throughout the world are eating more meat and fat than ever with worldwide meat consumption expected to double by 2020. In the western world alone, the per capita consumption of meat is…

AlbuquerqueBrazilianClosed in 2014Gone But Not Forgotten

Jamon’s Frybread Cabana – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:04 AM

Several years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth, multi-player gaming meant sitting at a table and playing board and card games with friends actually sitting across the table from you as opposed to the disembodied online kind of ‘friends.” My compadre Brad and I had been trounced several times by our pop culture savvy spouses at Trivial Pursuit, a primitive game contemporaneous with throwing rocks at mastodons.  After four games, we finally had a chance to win one, but it came down to the toughest question Kim and Vicki could muster in a pop culture category which had been our downfall all night.  The question was “Who is called the Marilyn Monroe of South America?”   You could hear a pin drop when I calmly answered “Sonia Braga.” Shockingly (for me), no one else at the table had even heard of Sonia Braga, a sultry seductress from Brazil…and tragically none of them had seen Gabriela and Flor and Her Two Husbands, two wonderfully spicy movies showcasing the raw voluptuousness of the sexy siren.  As if Sonia’s erotic qualities weren’t sufficiently alluring, in both movies her cooking was as integral to the plot lines as her lovemaking.  A stunning woman who…

AlbuquerqueBrazilianBuffetClosed in 2008Gone But Not Forgotten

Asado Brazilian Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:33 AM

When it comes to diplomatic coups, one of the least known for which President George Herbert Walker Bush is credited is the introduction to the United States of the popular Brazilian Churrascaria (steakhouse) Fogo de Chão (literally Fire of the Ground). During a visit to São Paulo, Brazil, the 41st President of the United States was so impressed by the unique dining concept that he told the owners a restaurant like theirs would go over big in his home state of Texas where as in Brazil, beef is king.  As one of the first Churrascarias to open in the United States, the Dallas Fogo de Chao helped blaze the way for other Churrascarias throughout the country. The first to open in Albuquerque was Tucano’s Brazilian Grill which launched in 2000.  In May four years later, Asado Brazilian Grill opened along restaurant row on Albuquerque’s Pan American Freeway West. Albuquerque’s Asado was actually the second in the state, launching more than a year after its sister Santa Fe restaurant (which closed in late 2005).  Still a third Asado is located in Evanston, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. The Churrasco tradition has its genesis in the Pampas, an extensive grass-covered plain in…