Category: Food Network Eats New Mexico

Diners Drive-Ins and DivesIllinoisRating: Very GoodSandwichUnited States

Al’s #1 Beef – Chicago, Illinois

Gil Garduno7:48 AM

Assume the position!  It’s been called the “Chicago Lean,” the “Italian Stance” and simply “The Stance.”   It’s  the time-tested, traditional art and science of eating Italian beef sandwiches, a Chicago specialty.  Trust me, it’s not the same as eating an ordinary sandwich.  If you don’t follow the process, you’re bound to spill shards of beef, bits of giardiniera and drippings of spice-laden beef gravy onto your clothing.  Italian beef sandwiches are as messy as they are delicious.  Some Italian beef sandwich shops don’t even offer seating.  Instead, they provide high, thin counters with or without stools where you’ll park yourself and proceed to assume the position.  I’ll let the professionals take over from here.  Courtesy of Italianbeef.com: (1)  Put your sandwich on the counter and stand in front of it, with your chest about 12 inches from the edge of the counter (2)  Lean forward so your chest is at a 45-degree angle to the counter (Note: if you’€™re wearing a tie, make sure it’s tucked inside your shirt) (3)  Pick up your sandwich, resting your elbows on the counter (4)  Angle the sandwich at a 45-degree angle to the counter, with the top end towards your mouth. (Imagine…

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Bert’s Burger Bowl – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:57 AM

The tee shirts worn by a nattily attired and enthusiastic wait staff at Bert’s Burger Bowl say it all: “Since 1954: One Location Worldwide.” Celebrating its golden anniversary in 2004, Bert’s seems to transcend time with a winning formula: great burgers, terrific service and reasonable prices. Generations of New Mexicans and visitors have made Bert’s a beloved Santa Fe dining destination.  It is such a beloved local institution that then-Representative Tom Udall entered it into the Congressional Record in September, 2004 to commemorate its 50th anniversary. It’s easy to believe Bert’s popularity is an anomaly. It’s open only until 7PM six days a week and until 5PM on Sundays. There’s nowhere to sit inside the restaurant and if you’re in a hurry, you’re out of luck because every burger is prepared to order. So why do generations of burgerphiles make Bert’s Burger Bowl a popular indulgence? World famous chef Martin Rios of the Anasazi may have said it best in the May, 2007 edition of Santa Fean magazine, “no one beats these burgers.” That’s high praise indeed from a culinary artiste who has been named Chef of the Year by both the city of Santa Fe and the State of…

Food Network Eats New MexicoNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: ExcellentTaos County

Orlando’s New Mexican Cafe – Taos, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:07 AM

During his 2005 visit to Taos for the taping of the Food Network’s Food Nation program, über-celebrity chef Bobby Flay, likely the best known grill chef in the world, probably didn’t do as much to put Orlando’s New Mexican restaurant on the culinary map as you might think. Ditto for all the many first place awards hanging on the restaurant’s walls–“Best Mexican Food in Taos County” every year since 2005, best red chile, best green chile, and more than 25 other awards.  Flay’s visit and the accolades on the wall are merely validation of what locals and visitors in the know have long known: Orlando’s is a “must visit” dining destination in Taos. Located in El Prado, a “suburb” of Taos about two miles northwest of the world-famous Taos Plaza, Orlando’s is as colorful a restaurant as you’ll find in Northern New Mexico.  Its marquee is that of a huarache-shod, mustachioed skeletal figure attired in a Mexican sombrero and serape.  In his left hand, he holds a bottle of hot sauce with the label “Taos.”  His bony right hand holds a skillet with a single flaming red chile, which does not–as some might surmise–denote the manner of his demise. The skeletal…

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Bobcat Bite – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:38 PM

Update:  In a twist of cruel irony, the Travel Channel’s May 13th airing of the Burger Land program celebrating the Bobcat Bite debuted just a few days after the announcement that the world-famous Bobcat Bite as we all know and love it will be forever changed.  An official statement from Bobcat Bite, issued on May 9th, announced the restaurant renowned for its outstanding green chile cheeseburger would shutter its doors in June, 2013.  The press release read: After 12 years, Bonnie and John Eckre will serve their last famous Bobcat Bite burger at the Old Las Vegas Highway location on June 9. They will be vacating the premises June 14th at the demand of the building’s owners, the Panzer family.”  Fret not, Bobcat Bite lovers.  Bonnie and John are serving their outstanding burgers at Santa Fe Bite just north of the famous Santa Fe Plaza. In his celebration of America’s favorite dish, filmmaker George Motz traversed the fruited plain in search of some of the country’s most unique burgers for his 54-minute film Hamburger America . An avowed burger lover, he wasn’t necessarily trying to find and rank America’s best burgers per se. Instead, he feted eight restaurants in continuous…

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Restaurante Rancho De Chimayo – Chimayo, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:26 AM

The humble Northern New Mexico village of Chimayo has a reputation far and wide as a place in which miracles occur. Because of the healing and restorative nature of those miracles, it has even been called the “Lourdes of America.” During Holy Week of 1813, a devout Penitente named Bernardo Abeyta was performing his penances on a hillside when he looked up and saw a bright light emanating from the ground near the river. Abeyta ran to the spot, knelt and began digging with his bare hands toward the light’s source. Within minutes he uncovered a large and wondrous crucifix bearing the image of Nuestro Senor de Esquipulas. The crucifix was processed to the church in Santa Cruz where it was placed in a niche off the main altar, but the next morning it was gone. In fact, the crucifix disappeared three times, only to be found back in its hole.  After the third time, everyone understood that Nuestro Senor de Esquipulas wanted to remain in Chimayo. A tiny chapel was then built above the hole. The miraculous healings began almost immediately with the first recipient being a grievously afflicted Bernardo Abeyta himself. The healings grew so numerous that the…

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Dragonfly Cafe & Bakery – Taos, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno10:29 PM

In 1989, the tarantula hawk wasp was designated the official state insect of New Mexico, joining the roadrunner (state bird), whiptail lizard (state reptile),  spadefoot (state amphibian), Sandia Hairstreak (state butterfly),  Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout (state fish) and the black bear (state animal) as official symbols of our great state.  Ostensibly the state legislature put aside partisan politics and selected these symbols after carefully weighing all options.  A case could certainly have been made for the dragonfly to represent New Mexico.  Not only is the dragonfly a ubiquitous presence–flitting fluidly and gracefully like tiny fairies attired in wardrobes of many colors–they are omnipresent in local lore and legend.  In The Boy Who Made Dragonfly A Zuni Myth retold by New Mexico’s eminent author Tony Hillerman, the dragonfly represents a messenger between children and the gods.  The Zuni consider the dragonfly a shamanistic creature with supernatural powers while to the Navajo, the dragonfly represents pure water. Anyone who’s ever observed these multi-colored frequent fliers as they perform such spectacular aerial feats as loop-the-loops and flying backwards can’t help but be held spellbound by their grace and beauty.  It’s no wonder so many birdwatchers have  become dragonfly watchers that dragonflies have come…

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Zia Diner – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno7:54 AM

In the year 1880, La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís” (“The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi”) bore little semblance to the popular vacation destination and tourist town it is today.  In fact, it was still pretty much a dusty frontier town of the old west with statehood more than a quarter century away.  Despite a population growth of nearly forty percent over the previous decade, Santa Fe was hardly considered a burgeoning center for commerce, much less tourism.  That would all change with the arrival of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company, an event which heralded a new period of prosperity and growth. The railroad facilitated trade between the New Mexico territory and the United States.  In addition to trade in dry goods, foodstuffs, clothing and books, the railroad ferried materials such as bricks and galvanized tin which paved the way for architectural diversity.  The facade of the Santa Fe Plaza, for example, would be transformed from a Spanish-Pueblo architectural style to a hybrid Spanish-Pueblo-Territorial style that persists today.  Victorian style brick buildings became very much in vogue throughout the town.  The arrival of the railroad …

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La Boca – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:49 AM

In a 1997 episode of Seinfeld, the “show about nothing,” George Costanza declared food and sex to be his two passions, reasoning that “it’s only natural to combine them.”  Jerry’s retort, “Natural?  Sex is about love between a man and a woman, not a man and a sandwich.” George Costanza may actually have gotten it right!  The mouth is actually considered an erogenous zone, an area of the body with heightened sensitivity, the stimulation of which may result in a sexual response. While most people don’t get sexually stimulated by eating, the mouth does host very sensitive taste receptors, including 10,000 taste buds on the tongue.  Perhaps that’s why so many people derive so much pleasure from the act of eating. It may have been with this realization that chef and proprietor James Campbell Caruso named his restaurant venture “La Boca,” which translates from Spanish to “the mouth.”  La Boca launched in the summer of 2006. Formerly executive chef at El Farol, Caruso is renown for melding Spanish and Mediterranean cuisines to create a unique cuisine that’s both traditional and contemporary.  It’s also extraordinary in its ability to tantalize the mouth with inimitable taste sensations. La Boca specializes in tapas,…

BrunchFine DiningFood Network Eats New MexicoRating: ExcellentSanta Fe

La Casa Sena – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:55 AM

He was an academic prodigy, one of the first two persons admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the Territory of New Mexico. He had a distinguished military career in the Union Army before being mustered out with the rank of Major. He served as sheriff of Santa Fe county for more than ten years and was a political power broker for both the Republican and Independent parties. Despite such an impressive pedigree, Civil War-hero Major Jose Sena might have been forgotten by the annals of history had it not been for his fabulous Territorial-style adobe house a block east of the Santa Fe Plaza. A prime example of a Spanish hacienda, the stately home has 33 ground-level rooms arranged as a square around a garden patio with towering shade trees and a gurgling fountain. Today Casa Sena is owned by prominent Santa Fe gallery owner Gerald Peters who has transformed what was once called home by Major Sena into a veritable art gallery with museum-quality landscapes on the walls, spectacular watercolor paintings in the outer rooms and hand-crafted Taos-style furniture throughout. Casa Sena abounds in ambience, exemplifying “old Santa Fe” style. Replete with shops, offices and one…

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The Pink Adobe – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:31 PM

Culinary historians credit the advent of the modern Santa Fe fine dining scene to a painter who moved to Santa Fe shortly after World War II to join the burgeoning art community. Having to support herself and a young daughter, Rosalea Murphy turned to something else at which she excelled–the culinary arts. As with most rags to riches success stories, Rosalea did not immediately set the Santa Fe dining scene on its ear, but then this wasn’t the “City Different” now widely recognized as a tourist Mecca. Good things take time. Great things take longer. When she first launched the restaurant she christened the Pink Adobe after the hue of its facade, her humble menu consisted solely of French onion soup and apple pie. As her business grew, so did her menu. She added “Pink Dobeburgers” to the menu and sold them for twenty-five cents each. Chicken enchiladas followed suit, the first of several New Mexican specialties she would add to the menu. Eventually her Pink Adobe became the first restaurant in Santa Fe to serve seafood, then a novelty in what was, in her words, “a lazy, sleepy town.” By the 21st century, the ambitious menu featured variety unlike…

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Cafe Pasqual’s – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:36 PM

Pasqual Baylon’s devotion to the Mass and the Holy Eucharist was so fervent that when assigned kitchen duty, angels had to stir the pots to keep them from burning.  It’s ironic therefore that San Pasqual is the recognized patron saint of Mexican and New Mexican kitchens, a beloved saint whose smiling countenance in the form of various art forms graces many a kitchen, including Katharine Kagel’s kitchen in the world famous Cafe Pasqual, one of Santa Fe’s most popular restaurants. Cafe Pasqual is a very small cafe with seating for only 50 patrons sitting in very close quarters. Prospective diners place their names on a waiting list then typically wait half an hour or more to be seated, usually longer if they want a “private” table (where you’re still elbow-to-elbow with your neighbors). Quicker seating is usually available if you’re willing to share space in the large community table where you can break bread with diners from all walks of life. Located one block southwest of the plaza in the heart of downtown, the split-level dining room is one of the most colorful venues in the City Different with a festive ambience that includes multi-hued, hand-painted Mexican tiles and murals.…