Category: Rating: Very Good

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

AlbuquerqueMediterraneanRating: Very Good

Sahara Middle Eastern Eatery – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:35 PM

History has shown that cultures which thrived and advanced most rapidly are those which settled in arable areas rife with  natural resources.  The “Cradle of Civilization” where many of the earliest human civilizations evolved is in a seemingly unlikely region of the Middle East in which most of the land is too dry for farming.  In this largely desolate region lies a narrow strip of land known as  the “Fertile Crescent” because of its fecund soil and life-giving waters.  The Fertile Crescent lies in the ancient area stretching in an arc from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates, an area the Greeks of Biblical times called Mesopotamia which means “between the rivers.”  This historical region, which includes some of the very best farmlands in the world, includes parts of or the entirety of the modern day nations of Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon and Jordan.  The Bible–from Genesis to the Gospels–overflows with references to the foods of the time as grown in this region. In Biblical times the most common and important foods were bread (the staff of life), olive oil (used instead of butter), milk and cheese from flocks of goats and sheep, vegetables (the most common of which…

New MexicanNew MexicoNew Mexico Culinary Treasures TrailNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Very Good

El Farolito – El Rito, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:59 AM

The most contentious seasonal difference of opinion between Northern and Southern New Mexico residents isn’t whether Chimayo produces better chile than Hatch (though this will forever be in dispute). The great civil debate dividing the Land of Enchantment has all to do with semantics. More specifically, it has all to do with the appropriate name for the little paper bag lanterns which house a votive candle and light the way for the Holy Family on Christmas Eve. Misguided citizens of New Mexico’s lower half (just about anywhere south of and including Albuquerque) mistakenly call those lanterns luminarias while their more enlightened Northern brethren call them farolitos. Luminarias–stacked and crossed piñon boughs ignited on Christmas Eve to light the Holy Family’s path to shelter–were brought to the new world from Spain, first to Mexico then to the American Southwest.  When delicate paper lanterns made their way from China to the Southwest via Mexico, they were called farolitos, or little lanterns. No one seems to know for sure how farolitos came to be called luminarias and even a children’s book by Rudolfo Anaya, one of New Mexico’s most prolific novelists, didn’t illuminate the truth.  His book “The Farolitos of Christmas” is a…

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…

AlbuquerqueRating: Very GoodSalvadoran

Pupuseria Y Restaurante Salvadoreño – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:18 AM

In the 1980s, several hundred thousand Salvadorans fled their civil war ravaged nation (courtesy, many would say of America’s attempting to turn El Salvador into the Western hemisphere’s version of Vietnam).  Many migrated to large metropolitan areas in the United States where their culture has quietly flourished.  Those immigrants introduced and hooked Californians on their national snack, a modest street food called the pupusa.  If you’ve never had a pupusa, there’s a chance you may have learned of them on the Food Network’s Diners Drive-Ins and Dives program.  In 2009, host Guy Fieri visited Santa Fe’s Tune-Up Cafe where the garrulous wayfarer was first introduced to pupusas himself. A pupusa is a thick, hand-made corn tortilla stuffed with sundry ingredients, the only limitation as to what each is engorged with being the imagination of the chef preparing them.  Unlike New Mexican tortillas, Salvadorian tortillas are made with no baking powder and very little (if any) salt.  They’re roughly four-inches in diameter and made with a maize masa.  In recent decades, pupuserias have sprung up in many large American cities.  Generally small and family run, pupuserias have been developing a very popular following among college students and adventurous diners. Pupuseria Y Restaurante…

BarbecueMissouriRating: Very GoodUnited States

Gates Bar B. Q. – Independence, Missouri

Gil Garduno1:40 PM

The cognoscenti seem to agree that the American epicenters of barbecue excellence are Texas, Memphis, Kansas City and South Carolina. In Texas, barbeque briquettes are burnished with beef–lean beef brisket celebrating the best in king cattle. At Memphis, they go hog wild at the pits for pulled porcine perfection. In South Carolina, the self-professed “cradle of American barbecue,” swine dining means pork smothered in a mustard-based sauce. Kansas City claims to put it all together with more than 100 barbecue restaurants, several of which have earned worldwide acclaim and celebrity. Traditionally, Kansas City barbecue is dry-rubbed, slow roasted over hickory and slathered with rich, sweetly tangy, medium spicy, tomato-based sauces that stick to the meat. Gates Bar-B-Q is a “City of Fountains” original, a family restaurant established in 1946 which has grown from a single store to a family of six modern restaurants (and growing) throughout the Kansas City metroplex. All Gates restaurants sport a unique red roof design and a marquee depicting a tuxedo attired butler who somewhat resembles Jeeves, one of the most recognized faces on the early Internet. The word bubble by the chapeau sporting butler on the marquee exhorts, “Hi, may I help you?” and it…

BreakfastEspañolaNew MexicanRating: Very Good

JoAnn’s Ranch O Casados Restaurant – Española, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:18 PM

Shortly after it was announced that Mary & Tito’s was selected as a 2010 recipient of the James Beard Foundation’s “Americas Classic” award, the brilliant Albuquerque Journal columnist Leslie Linthicum wrote a gilt-edged tribute to my very favorite New Mexican restaurant.  Indicating “the red chile at Mary & Tito’s Cafe brings grown men to poetic fevers,” she quoted something I wrote in my review which she must have found to be sufficiently rhapsodic to warrant mention. For anything I write to be considered even remotely “poetic” by the scintillating columnist is a great honor.  Compared to the spell-binding prose and incisive insight which typify Leslie’s columns, my writing is prosaic and dim-witted.  It’s akin to comparing Michelangelo’s work on the Cistene Chapel to the asymmetrical graffiti under an overpass…with me the tagger.  i don’t always  start off agreeing with Leslie’s viewpoints, but  so admire her sharp wit and sound-reasoned logic in forming her positions that she often sways my position.  She is simply a magnificent writer, my favorite columnist on any periodical anywhere (with apologies to the great Tom Cole)! In a 2008 column published on Thanksgiving Day, Leslie waxed eloquent in her inimitable manner about some of the things…

AlbuquerqueItalianPizzaRating: Very Good

JC’s New York Pizza Department – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno8:46 PM

Gil’s immutable law of thermodynamics posits that the enjoyment of even the best pizza is correlative with the length of time which has expired since it was removed from the oven.  Pizza tastes best right out of the oven when it is steaming hot and the aromas waft upwards to provide an almost sensual olfactory massage.  That flavor and olfactory appreciation diminishes as the pizza grows colder and your belly fuller.  This law is absolutely immutable, but it also has an equally immutable corollary: the flavor of a great pizza actually improves after it’s been refrigerated overnight.  It helps, of course, if you wake up ravenously hungry and that the pizza was fabulous to begin with. I developed this theory in 2003 after our inaugural visit to Al’s New York Pizza Department in Albuquerque’s Central Avenue after observing just how much we loved the pizza immediately after it got to our table and how that love, much like some relationships, diminished after two slices.  Fortunately the pizza was so large that we took about half of it home where we refrigerated it overnight.  Intending to nosh on only one slice of cold pizza for breakfast, we ended up devouring the…

Diners Drive-Ins and DivesFood Network Eats New MexicoMexicanRating: Very GoodTaos County

Antonio’s: A Taste of Mexico – Taos, New Mexico

Gil Garduno10:16 PM

A traditional corrido from the Mexican coastal state of Veracruz recounts the story of a smiling woman with magic hands.  The kitchen is the world of Maria Chuchena and the intoxicating aromas and incomparable flavors she concocts in that world are utterly unforgettable.  With her cooking, Maria fills the world with surprises.  If corridos have sequels and characters in folk songs bear offspring, Maria Chuchena’s progeny might well be Antonio Matus, chef and owner of the eponymous Antonio’s: A Taste of Mexico in Taos, New Mexico.  Like the corrido, Antonio is from Veracruz and like Maria Chuchena, the kitchen is his world.  It is where he has been filling Taos with utterly unforgettable surprises for more than a decade. After working in several dining establishments in the Taos area, Antonio launched his self-titled restaurant at the historic El Torreon Hacienda in El Prado, just north of Taos.  The hacienda which dates back to 1847 sits on acreage given to the Valdez family by the famous and infamous Padre Antonio José Martínez, the ecclesiastical leader of northern New Mexico whose unique style of Catholicism was in direct opposition to Archbishop Lamy, the French archbishop who reorganized the Catholic Church in the Southwest. In 2005, Antonio’s…

BakeryBurgersNew MexicoNew Mexico Culinary Treasures TrailNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Very GoodSandwichTravel Channel Eats New Mexico

Bode’s General Merchandise Deli & Bakery – Abiquiu, New Mexico

Gil Garduno4:28 PM

Mention food and convenience store in the same sentence and the first thing likely to come to mind is one of those perpetually rotating, alutaceous hot dogs seared to a leathery sheen under a heat lamp inferno. Not even a large slushie spiked with your favorite adult beverage would make that hot dog palatable. Mention food and gas station in the same sentence and all of a sudden that leathery hot dog at the convenience store sounds like a gourmet meal. Salty, cylindrically shaped dry meat snacks with the texture of sawdust and air-filled bags of Cool Ranch Doritos are typical gas station fare. Now mention New Mexican food and gas station in the same sentence and the likely image conjured is scatological, having more to do with “gas” than food and we’re not talking petroleum here. In 2007, Sarah Karnasiewicz, senior editor of Saveur, trekked back to New Mexico to discover some of  the Land of Enchantment’s best “filling stations,” service stations in which you can actually find food that is not only fit for human consumption, it’s quite good, too.  She observed that, “we know of no other state in the Union where you can so consistently find…

New MexicanNew MexicoNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Very Good

Benny’s Mexican Kitchen – Bosque Farms, New Mexico

Gil Garduno1:45 PM

“Whenever I need to leave it all behind Or feel the need to get away I find a quiet place, far from the human race Out in the country Whenever I feel them closing in on me Or need a bit of room to move When life becomes too fast, I find relief at last Out in the country.” In today’s dog eat dog rat race world (two bad animal metaphors in one sentence), who doesn’t dream of a peaceful idyll to which you can escape? Somewhere out in the country. *Appropriately the group expressing that sentiment so well in the above lyrics is Three Dog Night whose hit song “Out In The Country” made it to #14 in the pop charts back in August, 1970.  I know doctors, lawyers, scientists and white- and blue-collar employees from other vocations who make their escape just fifteen minutes south of Albuquerque–to country life in verdant Bosque Farms. Situated on the east side of the Rio Grande on a flat meadowy valley, Bosque Farms is a coalescence of rural, suburban and agricultural lifestyles along the braided routes of the historically significant Camino Real (the Royal Road) which skirts the Rio Grande.  Bosque Farms…

BakeryBreakfastNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Very GoodTaos County

Michael’s Kitchen – Taos, New Mexico

Gil Garduno5:56 PM

Murphy’s Law postulates that “if anything can go wrong, it will.” This rather pessimistic and oft-quoted expression has become a catch-all when everything seems to go askew. Murphy’s Law is blamed when you’re in the slowest line at a grocery store behind people who can’t find their checkbooks. It’s the reason the toast you accidentally drop off the table lands butter side down. It’s why the loudest and rudest people always sit in front of you at a movie theater. Murphy’s Law is also the reason the restaurant you brag most about will invariably have an “off night” on the day people you most want to impress visit. It never fails! This immutable law works like compound interest. The more you brag about a restaurant, the worse it will be for your guests. My brother George whose opinion on everything I value had told me for years that Michael’s Kitchen was one of the best restaurants in northern New Mexico. He appreciated its portion size, value and the quality of its New Mexican food (which the menu listed as “Spanish”). Our inaugural visit was compounded by mistakes. Going out on a rainy July night in 2003 when the Taos fiestas…