Category: Rating: Excellent

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

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…

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.…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…