Category: United States

AmericanArizonaRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

Roadkill Cafe – Seligman, Arizona

Gil Garduno9:20 PM

 I had my dinner yesterday In a place they call the Roadkill Cafe They serve their dishes full of tricks Scraped off Highway 66. From the Roadkill Cafe menu The legality of gathering and consuming roadkill varies from state to state.  In Tennessee, gathering and consuming flattened fauna (save for domestic pets) is not only perfectly legal, it made for great comedic fodder when Volunteer State native Al Gore ran for the Presidency.  In Maine, the police have to tag the furry Frisbees before you can take them home to cook it, while in Wyoming, the tagging is done by a game warden.  Only if you have a scientific collecting permit and plan to study it can you pick up roadkill in California.   Arizona state laws not only prohibit gathering and consuming roadkill, jurisprudence specifically prohibits the hunting of camels.  States in which roadkill is legal would envy the menu at Seligman, Arizona’s famous Roadkill Cafe on Route 66.  The menu includes such flattened food and car-crashed carrion as “Rack of Raccoon,” “Long Gone Fawn,” “Rigor Mortis Tortoise,” and “The Chicken That Almost Crossed the Road.”  Political correctness doesn’t spare the child either.  The children’s menu includes “Donald Forgot to…

ChineseFusionMexicanNevadaRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

China Poblano – Las Vegas Nevada

Gil Garduno10:38 PM

Mexican history and folklore recount the story of a remarkable woman who would come to be venerated as a holy woman and prophetess.  Born to nobility in India and possessing remarkable beauty, she was kidnapped as a young child and brought to Mexico, an intended gift to the Viceroy of Mexico whose personal harem of gorgeous women was known far and wide.  When she arrived in Acapulco on a Chinese ship, people were in awe of her breathtaking appearance and exotic ensemble, detailed with dazzling sequins and complex embroidery.  Her stye would come to be imitated far and wide by Mexican women who called it and her China Poblana which translates literally to “Chinese Pueblan.”  At the time, China was a term used to describe the entire Far East and all Asians. Instead of winding up one of the Viceroy’s concubines, she was adopted by a childless couple from Puebla who loved and raised her as their own daughter.  An extremely attractive and capable young woman, she nonetheless opted for a spartan life in a convent. Though she did not take her vows as a nun, she did lead an ascetic life and was reputed to have had visions of…

MexicanNevadaRating: ExcellentUnited States

Lindo Michoacan – Las Vegas, Nevada

Gil Garduno1:24 AM

Lindo Michoacan and its three scions strewn throughout the Las Vegas area may be the best gourmet-quality Mexican restaurants we’ve visited in America which aren’t owned by Rick Bayless or aren’t situated in Santa Fe (Los Potrillos) or Albuquerque (Los Equipales). The older sibling, Lindo Michoacan is a storied restaurant which over the years has garnered unprecedented local acclaim and has even been celebrated nationally. For years, it has earned “Best of Las Vegas” honors in the Mexican food category and if you listen to Vegas Chowhounds, there isn’t a Mexican restaurant in the city anywhere close. The founder’s story is also steeped in the kind of heart-rending rags-to-riches details that raconteurs tend to embellish until those details become legendary. The story has it that Javier Barajas learned his culinary craft as a young boy working at a convent. Mother Superior was so impressed by his work ethic that she assigned him to work in the kitchen where he absorbed everything he could about cooking. One meal at Lindo Michoacan and you’ll be convinced the nunnery served diving gastronomy and was staffed by cherubic, fat nuns who may have taken a vow of poverty, but not of gastronomic self-denial. As…

Closed in 2020Gone But Not ForgottenItalianNevadaUnited States

Il Mulino of New York – Las Vegas, Nevada (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:06 AM

While it may seem that Las Vegas is one perpetual bachelor party with hundreds of drunken frat boys expressing themselves loudly through expletives while leaving a hazy trail of smoke in their wake as they converge upon casino after casino, Sin City does have its pockets of civility.  One such refuge is Il Mulino during the lunch hour when it’s a veritable island of isolation and paragon of propriety despite being mere feet from the maddening throngs.  Perhaps it’s that aspect of propriety that explains the absence of teeming masses during lunch. Yes, it’s THAT Il Mulino, scion of the famous Italian restaurant held in reverential esteem and cited by the cognoscenti as perhaps the very best Italian restaurant in all of the five boroughs comprising New York City (although Mario Batali might have something to say about that).   The Las Vegas outpost of the fabulous Metropolis Italian restaurant is located at the top level of the Forum Shops at Caesars next door to Tommy Bahama.  The setting is so elegant, the ambiance so splendorous that you’ll quickly forget the proximal partiers. It’s not the crapulous carousers who frequent Il Mulino at night, but a more conservative, nattily attired crowd…

NevadaRating: N/R (Not Rated)SeafoodUnited States

Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab – Las Vegas, Nevada

Gil Garduno11:04 AM

“Stone crab is probably what God eats every night of the year, but in Florida we mortals only have it from mid-October to mid-May…” Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaize Clement Whether or not stone crab is really what God likes for dinner might make an interesting literary debate, but there’s no disputing that ordinary and not-so-mere mortals have loved the captivating crustaceans of citrus country for nearly a century.  In 1913 Joe Weiss discovered that stone crabs were not only edible, they were delicious–so much so that his small lunch counter in then backwater Miami Beach became an epicurean epicenter.  High society–everyone from Will Rogers, Gloria Swanson and Emelia Earhart to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and J. Edgar Hoover–flocked– to his restaurant.  So did a nemesis of Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Using the alias Al Brown, public enemy number one Al Capone and his entourage dined at Joe’s every evening.  Capone liked and respected Joe’s wife so much (and ostensibly her preparation of stone crabs) that every Mother’s Day, he sent a truck to the restaurant to deliver a horseshoe-shaped bouquet of flowers which read, “Good Luck Mother Joe’s.”  Jennie Weiss never realized who he…

ArizonaRating: Very GoodThaiUnited States

Malee’s Thai Bistro – Scottsdale, Arizona

Gil Garduno1:47 AM

Many a time have I luxuriated in the pleasures of a memorable repast at a restaurant outside of New Mexico and found myself thinking “if only these tastes were available back home.”  I typically then fantasize about bringing those tastes to the Land of Enchantment myself.  Alas, lofty intentions, a profuse lack of culinary talents and the absence of the capital necessary to realize my fantasies subsume those dreams and I instead yen for future visits to restaurants whose incomparable tastes have captured my reality. In Deirdre Pain, I found someone through whom I can live vicariously.  An aficionado of Thai food, she became disillusioned with most Thai restaurants, many of which lacked wine lists and whose wait staff struggled mightily with English.  In 1987 with the launch of Malee’s Thai Bistro (affectionately known as Malee’s on Main), she created an upscale venue for the exceptional cuisine of a favorite chef. Today Malee’s on Main is one of the most popular and highly regarded (earning a “24” rating on Zagat’s) Thai restaurants in the Phoenix area.  Housed in a circa 1921 building with a colorful history, Malee’s is only one of few restaurants on Main Street, denizen for a veritable pantheon…

IowaRating: ExcellentSandwichUnited States

Maid Rite – Osceola, Iowa

Gil Garduno3:28 AM

Several years ago my friend and colleague Bill “Roastmaster” Resnik and I had the opportunity to do what most employees only dream of.  We got to insult a corporate vice president for half an hour in the presence of even higher ranking corporate officials.  The occasion was the vice president’s retirement and we got to roast him– figuratively, but from the blush on his cheeks you might have thought it was literally.  It was one of the easiest from among the twenty or so roasts we’ve done because we had so much fodder with which to work.  The vice president was retiring to Iowa, a move which provided a wealth of material with which we could insult him. The roast was laced with references to farm animals, outhouses, Green Acres, American Gothic and the bridges of Madison County.  We even devised an Iowa “Slim Slow” diet that featured corn flakes and corn fritters for breakfast; corned beef hash, corn on the cob, corn chips, corn muffins and corn ice cream for lunch; homemade corn whiskey for an afternoon snack; and cornmeal encrusted Cornish game hens, creamed corn and candy Korn for dinner followed by a leisurely smoke on a corn…

BarbecueIllinoisRating: ExcellentUnited States

Gale Street Inn – Mundelein, Illinois

Gil Garduno1:31 PM

It took 47 years and one visit to the Gale Street Inn to understand why sailing vessels are ascribed the feminine gender. According to a placard on a wall at the Gale Street Inn, a nautical themed restaurant in the Northwest Chicago suburb of Mundelein, a ship is called a she because “there’s always a great deal of bustle around her…because there’s usually a gang of men around…because she has waist and stays…because she takes a lot of paint to keep her looking good…because it’s not the initial expense that breaks you, it’s the upkeep…because she is all decked out…because it take a good man to handle her right…because she shows her topside, hides her bottom and, when coming into port, always heads for the buoys.” While that theory may have the same veracity as a used car salesman telling you the lemon you’re about to buy was owned by a little old lady who used it solely to go to church on Sundays, its presence on the wall may infer something about the Gale Street Inn. To the women in our dining party, the inference was that the restaurant reeks of masculinity–a contention further borne out by the massive…

IllinoisRating: OutstandingSandwichUnited States

JOHNNIE’S BEEF – Arlington Heights, Illinois

Gil Garduno7:53 PM

If you think Chicagoland politics are a contentious topic, try debating which restaurant serves up the best Italian Beef Sandwich in the “City of Big Shoulders.” Opinions don’t necessarily vary that widely as there are just a handful of restaurants which have truly distinguished themselves in the preparation of this Chicago staple. It’s in the intensity of the debate with which you might be surprised. Each of the anointed restaurants has its vocal supporters and each has its detractors and some in either party won’t hesitate to explain (with fisticuffs if necessary) why their choice is the best and yours is not. In 2009, the Travel Channel’s “Food Wars” program pitted two of Chicago’s most famous culinary rivals against one another in a showdown designed to settle the debate as to which makes the best Italian Beef sandwich in town.  The two heated rivals were Al’s Beef and Mr. Beef, two inner city institutions which have been serving up some of the city’s very best Italian beef sandwiches for generations.  In 2010, the Food Network’s Food Feuds, a show with a similar concept also vied to settle the score between Al’s Beef and Mr. Beef.  How wholly unoriginal! The walls…

Closed in 2012DonutsGone But Not ForgottenIllinoisSpecialtyUnited States

Apple Haus – Long Grove, Illinois (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:07 AM

In grade school back in the 1960s, such characters as Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed filled my mind with wonder and awe as I learned to determine fact from fiction (a process I still employ when listening to  nauseating political commercials which pollute the airwaves).  My mind was a veritable tabula rasa (blank slate) upon which my teachers (and my incessant poring over the Encyclopedia) imprinted knowledge of legend, lore, myth and fact.  Learning was a much more innocent process, not yet clouded with the cynicism wrought by historical revisionism based mostly on political ideology. Johnny Appleseed, it turns out, was very much man, not myth.  Born John Chapman, he became an American legend in America’s frontier days with an enduring legacy that has ensured a place in history.  Johnny was raised on a small Massachusetts farm where he acquired a love of apples as well as adventure.  Renown for his generosity and his stewardship of the earth, he was a pioneering conservationist who planted apple seeds throughout the frontier, introducing apple trees to large parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The popular image is of Johnny Appleseed spreading apples randomly, everywhere he went. In actuality, he planted nurseries rather…

ContinentalIllinoisRating: N/R (Not Rated)

Bacchus Nibbles – Lake Zurich, Illinois

Gil Garduno2:39 AM

In Roman mythology, Bacchus was known as the god of wine and ecstasy. A youthful and handsome god with flowing tresses usually depicted wearing wine leaves or ivy on his head, he represented both the intoxicating and the beneficial influences of wine. Bacchanalian festivals, typified by riotous drunken merrymaking and sometimes orgiastic festivity are still celebrated in institutions of higher learning throughout America (who can forget the hilarious movie Animal House and the antics of the Delta House fraternity?). At Bacchus Nibbles Restaurant & Wine Shop, in Lake Zurich, a northwest Chicago suburb, wine can be appreciated in a “wine cave-like” atmosphere of civility and quaint refinement that  an aspiring sommelier might welcome. An impressive assemblage of wine, along with sundry liqueurs and liquors is on display in well organized racks throughout the restaurant.  The stacked wine bottles separate the dining areas.  The cozy restaurant belies its somewhat ramshackle, timeworn exterior which frankly doesn’t have the curbside appeal nearly the equal of its menu. The menu is a compendium of diverse indulgences not only from the Mediterranean, but from throughout the world.  Appetizers and specials of the day may include such succulent surprises as egg rolls, Norwegian smoked salmon, Thai…