Category: Rating: Excellent

Excellent – High quality dining experience; very good to excellent food, attentive service, and a well-maintained atmosphere; worth a detour.

AlbuquerqueBakeryBreakfastClosed in 2014GermanGone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoRating: Excellent

Dagmar’s Restaurant & Strudel Haus – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:18 AM

According to the 2000 United States Census, there are 47 million Americans of German ancestry, making them the largest self-reporting ethnic group in the country. German Americans represent 16 percent of the total U.S. population.  With such a large ancestry group, you might wonder why German cuisine isn’t as popular as the cuisine of its European neighbors Italy and France.  It’s a question which also seems to baffle the National Restaurant Association which posits that Americans characterize German food as “rich, indulgent foods; good, hearty portions; and irresistible desserts.”  With reasons like those, you might expect that there would be more German restaurants across the fruited plain (and more than one German restaurant in the Land of Enchantment).  Bon Appetit‘s restaurant and drink editor Andrew Knowlton gives hope that this will change, “In a refreshing departure from the Italian comfort food craze, America is enjoying a Germanic cuisine boom.  I chalk it up to the perfect storm of craft beer and charcuterie and the overall pork-obsessed times we live in.” If you grew up in the Midwest where German is the most reported ancestry, chances are you’re well acquainted with German food. My Kim grew up in Chicago where she…

Fine DiningRating: ExcellentSanta Fe

Luminaria – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno7:14 PM

 Her sunrise could bring light into a blind man. Her sunset could put tears there in his eyes. Her colors are laying there in brush strokes. Underneath those peote skies. –The Bellamy Brothers Santa Fe’s preternatural beauty is so captivating that even the plethora of writers, artists and musicians who pilgrimage to this jewel of the Southwest are at a loss for adjectives to adequately describe it. Perhaps because of their scarcity of synonyms, some of them refer to it as “Fanta Se” as in fantasy, a city so singularly soul-stirring that its mystical qualities seems to transcend reality. Santa Fe’s cuisine is also lavished with laudation. Critics and patrons alike lionize Fanta Se’s restaurants and the world class chefs which preside over traditional earthen ovens, ultra-modern steely stoves and Spanish style tapas grills to prepare the mouth-watering marriage of traditional and contemporary cuisine that has made Santa Fe one of the country’s foremost dining destinations. Every once in a while Santa Fe’s ethereal beauty and a magical dining experience converge to form the type of perfect syzygy planetary alignments would envy.  Such was the case during our inaugural visit to Luminaria, the resplendent shining star restaurant at the Inn…

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…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2020Gone But Not ForgottenKoreanRating: Excellent

Fu Yuang – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno5:12 PM

“I’ve eaten a river of liver and an ocean of fish! I’ve eaten so much fish, I’m ready to grow gills! I’ve eaten so much liver, I can only make love if I’m smothered in bacon and onions” ~ Hawkeye Pierce MASH 4077, Korea FROM THE FU YUANG FACEBOOK PAGE: Our Dear Fu Yuang friends, we closed the doors for business on Saturday, November 21st, 2020. 😢 Mia is no longer able to meet the physical demands of operating the restaurant. We tried to sell the restaurant to many prospective buyers, with no luck due to COVID-19. We want to thank everyone for their kindness, dedication, & support over the past 26 1/2 years. We will truly miss you all. Thanks for all the memories we have made together at Fu Yuang! For eleven years, televisions across the fruited plain were tuned in to CBS where the antics of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) enthralled audiences with a unique blend of crude hilarity and heartfelt humanity.  Set in South Korea during the Korean War, the series centered around a group of resilient doctors, nurses and support staff in an isolated hospital compound which saw more than its share…

AlbuquerqueRating: ExcellentSteak

Vernon’s Speakeasy – Los Ranchos De Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno4:19 AM

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution ushered in the era of Prohibition in the United States, an era was to last from 1920 through 1933.  Only liquors used for religious purposes were excluded.  Because alcohol was declared illegal by the Congress, bootleggers and distributors of illicit alcohol thrived.  There was no shortage of enthusiastic scofflaws willing to run afoul of the law in order to enjoy intoxicating beverages.  One of the most popular milieus in which alcohol was served was the speakeasy. A speakeasy was generally either a restaurant or a bar to which patrons gained admission by knocking on a door and uttering a secret password.  Once inside, patrons were treated very well in a swanky ambiance that may have included elaborate floor shows, fine dining and live entertainment.  Speakeasies flourished throughout the United States. Vernon’s Speakeasy (formerly known as Vernon’s Hidden Valley Steakhouse), no longer one of the Albuquerque area’s best kept secrets, celebrates…

AlbuquerqueChocolateRating: Excellent

Chocolate Cartel – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:22 PM

“Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands — and then eat just one of the pieces.” Judith Viorst, American Author & Journalist “Betcha can’t eat just one.”  In the early 1960s, Lay’s Potato Chips made that slogan a household phrase, in the process increasing potato chip sales significantly and opening up new markets internationally.  Today, North Americans consume approximately 1.2 billion pounds of potato chips every year, making it the most consumed snack food in the entire continent.  There is no physiological basis, however, for Lay’s assertion that its salty snack favorite is so addictive it can’t be resisted.  The same can’t be said of chocolate Chocolate most assuredly does have psychoactive properties.  Similar to turkey, chocolate is replete with tryptophan, amino acids in the human diet which assist in the production of serotonin, our mood-modulating neurotransmitter. It is also imbued with phenyl-ethylamine, a substance which stimulates the same bodily reaction as falling in love. Female humorists have often extolled the superiority of chocolate over sex, even comprising a list of twenty reasons chocolate is better than sex. Perhaps in retort, Italian researchers (mostly men) “discovered” that women who eat chocolate…

AlbuquerqueRating: ExcellentThai

Thai Cuisine – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:36 PM

In my old haunt of Boston, television commercials proclaimed Wednesdays as Prince spaghetti day. They depicted spry youngsters dashing home excitedly for their weekly repast of pasta products made by the Prince Spaghetti company.  In Albuquerque, Thursdays were–until April 25th, 2008–green curry day at Thai Cuisine. Thursday was the day of the week in which patrons could  excitedly look forward to the restaurant’s Thai cuisine lunch buffet offering incomparable green curry among other incomparably delicious attractions. On that ignominious April day, Thai Cuisine stopped serving their daily buffet, citing food wastage as a concern.   Thai Cuisine’s buffet was reminiscent of a baseball team’s pitching rotation, meaning some of the restaurant’s best entrees took turns on the menu’s rotation, usually a week apart between appearances.  Regular visitors knew specifically on what day of the week they could visit Thai cuisine for their favorite entree.  Buffet-goers mourned the  “perceived” diminished portions while regulars who appreciate routine lamented the change. Savvy diners who enjoy the adventure and thrill of ordering from the menu know that it can still be “green curry day” on Thursday…or any other day of the week they’d like.  Moreover, they know they can order, sight unseen and aroma not…

New MexicanNew MexicoNew Mexico Culinary Treasures TrailRating: Excellent

Pete’s Cafe – Belen, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:09 AM

Located along the braided routes of the historic Camino Real (the Royal Road) which skirts the Rio Grande, Belen remains the hub for two major rail lines. To this day, an average of 70 trains travel through Belen every 24-hour period. In 1901, to capitalize on the railway traffic, the Fred Harvey Company built one of the sixteen Harvey Houses it would build in New Mexico. Belen’s Harvey House provided lunch and dining facilities in close proximity to the tracks. The Harvey House was bustling with railroad crews well into the twentieth century’s fourth decade and served as a social center for the community until its closure shortly after World War II ended. Four years after the war to end all wars, Pete and Eligia Torres launched Pete’s Cafe across the street and acequia from the old Harvey House. Though neither had any restaurant experience, they delighted travelers and railway employees with their cafe–even though the Torres family didn’t begin serving New Mexican cuisine for about twenty years when local traffic surpassed train traffic. With more than sixty years of serving the community of Belen, Pete’s continues to thrive because it operates under a simple philosophy: Not the best because…

AmericanBrunchNew MexicoRating: Excellent

Las Fuentes at The Bishop’s Lodge – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:24 PM

In 1927, Willa Cather penned one of the very best novels ever written about New Mexico in Death Comes For the Archbishop, an American literary classic based on the the vicissitudes of Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy. As the first bishop of Santa Fe, Lamy faced the prolific challenge of reestablishing a congruent Catholic church while facing religious corruption and the desolation and loneliness of living in a strange and unforgiving land. It’s no wonder he had a secluded retreat built for him in the colorful foothills of the Sangre De Cristo mountains. That exquisite hideaway has become one of America’s best retreats with exceptional accommodations, unlimited recreational opportunities and now, the finest in dining. In the spring of 2002, the Bishop’s Lodge Resort and spa launched a new concept restaurant called Las Fuentes (The Fountains), so named because of the lush green oasis watered by the Spa’s own water recycling plant. On Sundays, Las Fuentes features a lavish brunch buffet which perennially garners “the best in Santa Fe” recognition. To say it’s one of the very best brunch buffets we’ve had in New Mexico is a vast understatement. For just shy of $40 per person,  not including  tip, you can…

AlbuquerqueIndianRating: ExcellentVegetarian/Vegan

Annapurna Ayurvedic Cuisine – Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:14 AM

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.” Anthony Bourdain’s dour diatribe on the “evils” of vegeterians and vegans is hardly unwonted.  The internet is rife with mean-spirited assailments against people who choose a plant-based diet that includes fruits, cereal grains, seeds, nuts and vegetables and may or may not exclude dairy products and eggs.  Reciprocation in kind is also well represented on the Internet by vegetarians and vegans who lambast the carnivorous cravings of meat-eaters. This lack of civility and parochial discourse is usually reserved for politics and ideologues (on both sides of the aisle) who can’t concede any merit whatsoever about the opposing viewpoint.  It’s not enough to disagree with someone else’s opinion or choice, dissenters on both sides seem to have a base need to resort to derisive pejoratives. So, just how do you resolve differences of opinion without…

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…