Category: Breakfast

AlbuquerqueAmericanBreakfastDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Central Grill and Coffee House – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:26 AM

It’s been said that “when you feed those in need, you are feeding your soul.”  That is especially true when the giver is practicing selfless giving, a conscious, intentional approach to giving that not only benefits others, but comes during a time when the giver is in dire need of help as well.  When the New Mexico state government’s approach to the Cabrona Virus virtually closed down or limited restaurant operations across the state, it’s an understatement to say restaurateurs were really hurting.  Dozens of restaurants across the Land of Enchantment closed. Hundreds of employees were laid off.   It was during these trying times that several restaurateurs demonstrated truly heroic altruism, showing precisely what it means to be a great neighbor.   Among the most selfless givers were restaurateurs George and Alicia Griego, owners of Albuquerque’s Central Grill.   In 2020, George and Alicia were named the New Mexico Restaurant Association’s (NMRA) Restaurant Neighbor of the Year for 2020.  Though their popular eatery faced the same unpredictable operating conditions crippling other restaurants, George and Alicia looked for opportunities to help their neighbors.  In the spirit of Luke 10:25, they opened their hearts, providing thousands of boxes to feed school…

AlbuquerqueBreakfastBrunchDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Southern

Biscuit Boy – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In Boris Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago, a sagacious old Russian czarist caught up in the communist revolution lamented “Scratch a Russian and you will find a peasant.”  To paraphrase that immortal line “Scratch a cook and you’ll find a chemist.”  Think I’ve been ingesting pharmaceuticals?  Maybe you should ask Deonte “Dee” Halsey, the affable owner of Biscuit Boy about the influence of chemistry in cooking.  He would know!  Dee was actually a research scientist working for the U.S. Department of Architecture before figuring out teaching science actually pays more than doing science.  Dee has been teaching science and math for more than two decades now, imparting knowledge and wisdom to high school, middle school and elementary school students.  For the past two years or so, he’s also been spending weekends hawking some of the very best biscuits you’ll find in the Land of Enchantment.  On Saturday you can find him at La Esquinita, a center for cultural flourishment in the Barelas neighborhood.   A mixed-use development combining housing, food, arts and retail, La Esquinita is yet another reason to visit Barelas.  On Sundays “in season” he plies his sideline at the Rail Yards Market in Albuquerque.   Though he grew up in Los Angeles,…

AlbuquerqueBreakfastDog FriendlyNew MexicanRating: Excellent

Barelas Coffee House – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:16 AM

Quick, name the oldest neighborhood in Albuquerque. Most people would say Old Town which was settled in 1706 near the banks of the Rio Grande. Most people would be wrong. The oldest neighborhood in Albuquerque is actually the Barelas neighborhood, formally established as a ranching settlement in the late 1600s. The history of the central Rio Grande region began at and expanded from Barelas, once a thriving hub of commerce bustling with activity. Both the Camino Real, the royal road to Mexico City and Route 66, America’s mother road passed through the Barelas neighborhood. Barelas was the seat of a flourishing railroad enterprise which facilitated a burgeoning economy.  The neighborhood began a precipitous decline in the 1950s when odoriferous emanations from an area sewage treatment plant drove people away. Then in the 1960s, shopping mall developments proved too formidable competition for long-established mom and pop businesses, the economic heart of the community. Before long, the federal government was calling Barelas a “pocket of poverty” and what was once a thriving neighborhood languished. By the 1970s, Barelas was all but forgotten–perhaps a blessing in disguise because that allowed the preservation of historic buildings for which the community is best known today.…

BreakfastMexicanNew MexicoRating: ExcellentSanta Fe

Los Potrillos – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:39 AM

Faced with a situation that renders us incredulous, many of us might yammer incoherently, complain vociferously or maybe even utter colorful epithets. Such moments, it seems, are best expressed with succinct precision, a rare skill mastered by a select few wordsmiths from which eloquence flows regardless of situation–polymaths such as the late Anthony Bourdain, a best-selling author, world traveler, renowned chef and “poet of the common man.” Flummoxed at the discovery of a Chili’s restaurant a mere five miles from the Mexican border, I might have ranted and raved about another inferior chain restaurant and its parody of Mexican food. With nary a hint of contempt, Bourdain instead compared the spread of Chili’s restaurants across America to herpes. How utterly brilliant and wholly appropriate was that? Indicating that chain restaurants are “the real enemy, the thing to be feared, marginalized and kept at a distance at all costs,” he wondered aloud why anyone would eat institutionalized franchise food when the real thing is available nearby. Bourdain, a cultural assimilator, would love Los Potrillos, an unabashedly authentic Mexican restaurant which serves the food Mexican citizens eat everyday, not the pretentious touristy stuff or worse, the pseudo Mexican food proffered at Chili’s…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBreakfastBrunchDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)

Curious Toast Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“Toasting makes me uncomfortable, but toast I love. Never start the day without a good piece of toast. In fact, let’s toast to toast.” ~George Costanza You might think that only a short, stocky, slow witted bald man would live a life so mundane as to even consider making a toast to a good piece of toast.  That may have been the case even just a few years ago when many of us languished under the covers until the very last second then wolfed down a dry and uninspiring piece of toast while gulping a scalding cup of coffee.  With crumbs cascading down our chins and onto our button-down shirts, we rushed to our appointed rounds, destined to arrive at work two minutes after our designated start time.  Toast hadn’t sated our appetites and worse, contributed to our heartburn. Since Eater designated 2015 as “the year of the avocado toast,” “gourmet toast” has been in an ascendency that’s finally caught up with Albuquerque.   It’s an idea whose time has come.  No longer should diners be satisfied with a cold pat of butter or cream cheese on no personality bread that’s already cool by the time it gets to your table. …

AmericanBreakfastCajunClosed in 2022CorralesDog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico

Waffology – Corrales, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

FROM WAFFOLOGY’S FACEBOOK PAGE: We regret to announce our final closing. We fought hard and we appreciate all of you who came alongside us. February 5th will be our last day serving from 9am-6pm. In an article for New Mexico Magazine, scintillating four-time James Beard award-winning author Cheryl Alters Jamison proclaimed “Pity the folks who think breakfast is a bowl of cornflakes or some granola and yogurt—talk about starting the day with a yawn! I’m here to tell you that the best, most bodacious wake-up food, bar none, is New Mexico’s breakfast burrito. It doesn’t just break the fast, it blasts it.”  Cheryl may not have called out other American breakfast staples.  She didn’t need to. When my friend Bruce “Sr. Plata” Silver (who grew up in Los Angeles but has lived in New Mexico almost half his life) invited me to join him for breakfast at Waffology in beautiful downtown Corrales, we discussed the challenges of breaking the New Mexico breakfast paradigm.  Most New Mexicans enjoy an occasional breakfast of crepes, pancakes, French toast and waffles, but given our druthers we prefer breakfast burritos by just about the same margin with which George Washington won the country’s inaugural Presidential…

AmericanBreakfastClosed in 2022CorralesDog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico

Corrales Bistro Brewery – Corrales, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

What is it about French words that make them sound haughty and pompous to some people and elegant and refined to others? Think I’m kidding? In Massachusetts, I knew a guy who for two years sported the nickname “Le Cochon” like a badge of honor before someone had the heart to tell him it meant “the pig.” He had thought that sobriquet was a testament to his prowess with the ladies (on second thought, maybe it was). Still questioning my observations on French words? Take an informal poll of men (women are smarter) in the office and ask them what the word “bistro” means. I did and most respondents gave me some variation of “snobbish, hoity-toity, fancy, upscale” restaurant. In truth, a bistro is a small restaurant which typically features simple fare and sometimes provides entertainment. So, if you’re looking for a fancy, upscale French brewery when you see the name “Corrales Bistro” you’ll be in for a disappointment. If, however, you’re looking for terrific sandwiches, burgers, New Mexican food and more you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The Corrales Bistro Brewery (“The Bistro” for short) opened shortly after New Years Day on 2007 at the former site of Essencia, a wonderful…

AlbuquerqueBreakfastNative American

Indian Pueblo Kitchen – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

>Pedro de Castaneda, a Spanish explorer who chronicled Coronado’s expeditions through the southwest from 1540 to 1542 observed that corn, beans, and squash were the main staples of the pueblo diet. Of the three, which have come to be known as “Three Sisters,” corn was the most important. It was boiled whole, toasted on the cob, or dried and ground into a fine powder easily cooked as bread or gruel.  Every day female family members knelt before metates (grinding stones), grinding corn to feed their gods, fetishes and kin. One crushed the maize, the next ground it and the third ground it even finer. Castaneda observed that the women worked joyfully at this task.  The three sisters of corn, beans and squash remain an integral part of the pueblo diet. Think “pueblo harvest” and the first image the term evokes is likely of the classical “horn of plenty” motif depicting a bountiful cornucopia in which corn, beans and squash spill out of a goat’s horn.  This rich symbolism of pueblo life also represents the cuisine at the Indian Pueblo Kitchen (formerly known as Pueblo Harvest), a restaurant which celebrates the culinary traditions of New Mexico’s nineteen Indian pueblos and showcases…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBetter Call SaulBreakfastBrunchDog FriendlyRating: Excellent

Cafe Lush – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:14 PM

Urban Dictionary, that oft hilarious, veritable cornucopia of slang, jargon and streetwise lingo, defines “lush” as “someone who drinks a lot.” (Actually, there are several pages of similar definitions for “lush” in the “peoples’ dictionary,” but this one was the best fit for this PG-rated blog.) When I asked Sandy Gregory, a self-admitted “food industry lifer” and co-owner of Albuquerque’s Cafe Lush why the name Lush, she laughingly kidded “because we like to drink a lot.” Seeing that her response left my mouth agape, she winked and corrected herself, “because our food is luscious.” You’ve got to love a restaurant owner with whom you can engage in witty repartee. At Cafe Lush, you’ve got two of them. Sandy’s husband and business partner Tom Docherty explained why they launched their restaurant venture: “We’re too poor to retire and too old to work for someone else.” With nearly a combined eight decades in the restaurant business, Tom and Sandy want to make Cafe Lush a cafe in which “food for the senses” is more than just a clever but empty slogan. It’s a formula for success and one which garnered “best chef” accolades from Alibi readers for Chef Docherty in the magazine’s…

BreakfastCajunClosed in 2022CorralesDog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico

C3’s Bistro – Corrales, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

FROM 3C’s BISTRO’S FACEBOOK PAGE: We regret to announce our final closing. We fought hard and we appreciate all of you who came alongside us. February 5th will be our last day serving from 9am-6pm. A case could be made that “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” the name of a 1977 hit by Santa Esmeralda, could well be a lament about New Mexican cuisine (in addition to being the background music during the classic sword fight between Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in Kill Bill I).  As frequently chronicled on Red or Green: New Mexico’s Food Scene is on Fire, national print, online and onscreen media continue to refer to the Land of Enchantment’s sacrosanct cuisine as “Mexican food.”  The same media talking heads also insist on spelling our state’s official state vegetable as “chili.”  Maybe it’s not fake news, but it’s pretty darn lazy journalism. Right about now, denizens of the Bayou State (that’s Louisiana for you Yankees) are saying “you think you’ve got it bad.”  For decades, most of us–laypeople and media alike–don’t recognize that Louisiana actually has two nationally renowned regional cuisines: Cajun and Creole.  And if we know about Louisiana’s two distinct and prominent cuisines, most…

BreakfastMexicanNew MexicoRating: GoodRio Rancho

Federico’s Mexican Food – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno7:09 PM

in February, 2020, Chef’s Pencil crunched the numbers of Google searches  for ethnic cuisines to determine the most popular ethnic cuisines in America. The two most popular ethnic cuisines were deemed to be Mexican and Chinese. Denizens of the East preferred Chinese cuisine while the West went for Mexican food. Google data showed that Mexican cuisine is the most popular ethnic cuisine in 27 states–including New Mexico. Unfortunately, the data didn’t distinguish between Mexican and New Mexican or even between Mexican and Tex Mex. In reporting Google’s findings, KRQE interviewed several New Mexicans, some of whom were rather expressive about Google’s search results not recognizing  New Mexican cuisine as a unique culinary offering.  They need not be. Google’s search algorithm used rather shallow categorization to determine what constitutes ethnic foods.  That algorithm, for example, also didn’t distinguish between various types of Chinese cuisine: Szechwan, Hunan, Cantonese, and six others. The point remains, however, that outside the Land of Enchantment New Mexican cuisine is not widely recognized as a unique offering.  Even some national culinary cognoscenti tend to consider it an offshoot of Mexican cuisine or worse, a derivative of Tex-Mex.  To some degree, that’s understandable.  Only within the past few…