Category: Rating: Very Good

Very Good – Good to very good food; generally solid; delivers consistent quality, strong technique, and a comfortable, enjoyable dining experience

AlbuquerqueBurgersNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Grassburger – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno1:20 PM

For nearly a decade, television viewers have been subjected to a very successful advertising campaign depicting contented cows talking and singing about the pleasures of life in sunny and warm California. The slogan for the “happy cows” campaign’ is “Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California.” The campaign would have you believe the cows are happy because they feast and frolic on a diet of delicious grass from verdant hillsides and not on troughs full of grains which don’t taste quite as good. I don’t know about cows being happier because they graze on grass, but…

AlbuquerquePizzaRating: Very GoodSaladSandwich

Dion’s Pizza – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:35 PM

Toga! Toga! Toga! Ever since the misfit Delta Tau Chi fraternity threw the most debaucherous toga party ever in the 1978 “teensploitation” comedy Animal House, the toga party has been ingrained in the college party culture. The genesis of the toga party goes back much, much further than Animal House. Toga parties, in fact, precede collegiate life in the fruited plain by many hundred years. The first toga party was actually organized in ancient Greece in honor of the Greek god Dionysus, the deity of the grape harvest, wine-making and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theater and religious ecstasy (that’s…

MediterraneanNew MexicoRating: Very GoodRio Rancho

Al-quds Mediterranean Grill II – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

The penultimate day of the 2023 International Balloon Fiesta will be memorable for many reasons.  Foremost may be the 2023 annular eclipse whose path took it directly above the Balloon Fiesta Park, host of the world’s largest ballooning event.  That day will be imprinted on our minds for another reason–our inaugural visit to Al-quds Mediterranean Grill in Rio Rancho.   The second instantiation of perhaps Albuquerque’s most popular Middle Eastern restaurant is located on The Village on Rio Rancho, a timeworn shopping center that flourished in the early 1990s when Intel’s Fab 4 was fully operational. Neither owner Mohammad Abdeljalil…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyItalianPizzaRating: Very Good

Il Vicino – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:54 AM

Undoubtedly the most oft-quoted line on Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” is “good fences make good neighbors.” Frost, a four-time Pulitzer Prize award winning American poet certainly didn’t have Il Vicino (“the neighbor”) in mind when he penned his prose. Fortunately fences are no obstacle to patrons of this popular contemporary Italian trattoria. A well-regarded neighborhood eatery with three Albuquerque locations, Il Vicino is probably best known for its wood-oven pizza and award-winning brewery with popular micro-brewed ales but it offers much more than that. Known in some circles for prized beers, Il Vicino has a private wine label designed…

AlbuquerqueAmericanDog FriendlyFusionNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Fuego 505 Rotisserie & Bar – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:01 PM

“I have become obsessed with cooking meat over fire. I get prepared for it. I make sure I’m hungry before I cook it. The smell of the smoke and the aroma of the crackling meat ignites some ancient genetic memories. It makes cooking and eating significantly better.” ~Joe Rogan, Podcast Host Those of us with a carnivorous bent can relate to Joe Rogan’s ode to cooking meat over fire.  There’s absolutely nothing as mouth-watering as the heady aroma and melodious sound of meat searing on the grill or sizzling in a pan.  An argument can easily be made that nothing…

CorralesDog FriendlyNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Perea’s Tijuana Bar & Restaurant – Corrales, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:36 PM

The curious appellation “Tijuana Bar” dates back to the 1920s when the 18th amendment to the Constitution established Prohibition in the United States during the period 1920 to 1933. Because Prohibition forbade the sale of alcoholic beverages, many Americans got their alcohol illegally or they went to Mexico. Tijuana was a popular vacation and honeymoon destination and it happens to be where Teofilo C. Perea, Sr. and his bride honeymooned in the 1920s. The newlyweds visited a bar called the “Tijuana Bar” and decided then and there to use that name should they ever open a bar. Bureaucracy being what…

AlbuquerqueRating: Very GoodSandwich

The Yeller Sub – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno10:20 AM

In the town where I was born… Lived a man who sailed to sea… And he told us of his life… In the land of submarines… – The Beatles: Yellow Submarine The phantasmagorical 1966 Beatles song Yellow Submarine may or may not have been the inspiration for Albuquerque’s venerable Yeller Sub, but one thing’s for certain.  Since it launched in 1979, the Yeller Sub has been the Duke City’s land of  oversized sub and torpedo sandwiches. Long-time residents will remember that the Yeller Sub was first located on Juan Tabo not too far from Manzano High School. Today it resides…

AlbuquerqueBarbecueDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: ExcellentRating: Very Good

Rudy’s Country Store & Barbecue – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:49 AM

In 1983, country crooner Ed Bruce released a song titled “My First Taste of Texas,” the first line of which was “My first taste of Texas was her blue eyes and golden hair.” Some ten years later, I experienced my first taste of great Texas barbecue when visiting Rudy’s Country Store & Barbecue in Leon Springs, Texas, a San Antonio suburb on the fringes of the magnificent Texas Hill Country. At the time Rudy’s was just beginning to make inroads toward becoming a significant barbecue presence in Texas where beef and brisket are king. Back then Leon Springs appeared to…

BernalilloFood TruckMexicanNew MexicoRating: Very GoodTacos

Sazon Con Amor – Bernalillo, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

The Broadway musical Rent taught us that a year is comprised of “five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.”   Instead of measuring the length of a year “in daylights, sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee, inches, miles, laughter or strife,” Rent encouraged us to measure a year in life in seasons of love.  Not surprisingly, Seasons of Love (a song from the musical from which the italicized lyrics originated) came immediately to mind when we espied Sazon Con Amor, a food truck (that’s mobile kitchen to you, Bob) parked on Highway 550 in Bernalillo. Sazon Con Amor translates from Spanish to…

ArizonaHot DogsRating: Very GoodSandwichUnited States

Ted’s Hot Dogs – Tempe, Arizona

Gil Garduno12:02 AM

Reading Becky Mercuri’s magnificent Great American Hot Dog Book had the same effect on me that Fifty Shades of Grey had on soccer moms throughout the country.   How can someone so food obsessed not delight in such beautiful prose as “Western New York is definitely hot dog country and the preferred method of cooking is charcoal grilled.”  Charcoal grilled!  There goes another foodgasm.  New Mexicans don’t have to travel all the way to Buffalo, New York to experience these magnificent charcoal grilled libido activators.  We only have to go to Tempe, Arizona to sate our hunger…or lust, in some…

AlbuquerqueNew MexicoPizzaRating: Very GoodSandwich

Richie B’s – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno8:14 PM

If you’ve ever wondered why New Yorkers fold their pizza slices in half lengthwise (aka the “fold hold”) and if you’ve ever attributed that practice to Big Apple quirkiness, you owe it to yourself to visit Richie B’s, a New York-style pizzeria on Unser in the Duke City’s Northwest quadrant. Now, the Albuquerque metropolitan area has plenty of claimants to New York-style pizza, but can you name a single one in which you’ve actually HAD to utilize the fold hold to eat a slice? New Yorkers have mastered the fold hold because true New York-style pizza is thin-crusted and cut…