Category: Mexican

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Taconeta – El Paso, Texas

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

The meme below purports to show where the highest quality of tacos in Texas can be found.    Study the map and you’ll get the impression the meme’s creator believes tacos are “nonexistent” throughout about half of the Lone Star State.  That includes the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex as well as all of West Texas.   Most of what the meme’s creator believes are the Lone Star State’s “best tacos” can be found only in San Antonio and the South Texas Plains as well as in portions of the Texas Hill Country.  A “best tacos” designation is also accorded to the El Paso area. There is, of course, no official sanctioning of this (or any other) Texas Taco Map.  It’s just someone’s…

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Nixta Taqueria – Austin, Texas

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Man cannot live on barbecue alone–not even in Austin, Texas where the world’s very best barbecue is to be found.  To limit one’s self to barbecue–as transformative as it may be–is to deprive yourself of some of the best Mexican food and best fried chicken in the known world.  Though the primary purpose of my week-long visit to the City of the Violet Crown was to visit Michelin starred barbecue restaurants, to have done so have been “going deep,”  exploring just one segment of the Central Texas culinary Utopia.  “Going wide” meant exploring options beyond barbecue–options such as some of the aforementioned Mexican food joints for which Austin is renowned. At the very top of my list was Nixta Taqueria…

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Chilte – Phoenix, Arizona

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“Me Vale Madre.”  If you grew up speaking Spanish–or maybe just being around Spanish-speaking people–you probably know it’s a derrogatory term.  Essentially, even though the phrase inludes the Spanish term “madre” which means “mother,”  it’s telling someone you don’t give a fu…fudge.  “Me Vale Madre” is Chilte’s mantra.  It’s the restaurant staff basically saying “we don’t care that we don’t meet your conceptions of what Mexican food should be.  We’re going to do it our way.”  How can you not love that?  I asked our server to explain to my Kim what that mantra means and he gave us a polite, G-rated version that was as far from the truth as a political promise. Chilte’s website makes no bones about…

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Herencia – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

When he founded Los Equipales in 1996, restaurant impresario Henrique Valdovinos admitted “I wouldn’t have tried this ten years ago, but I think people are ready for it.”  As recently as a quarter-century ago, two types of Mexican restaurants existed across the fruited plain.  Most common were those sharing reciprocal expectations with diners who expected and received such stereotyped “Mexican” food as fajitas; hard-shelled tacos filled with ground beef, cheese, lettuce and sour cream; chiles rellenos made with bell peppers and enough yellow cheese to clog a dinosaur’s arteries.  Denizens under the spacious skies didn’t know any better and enjoyed the watered down versions of the real deal.  This “Mexican” food became mainstream. The other type of Mexican food restaurants…

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Escondido – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” ~Luke 8:17 “Escondido (which translates from Spanish to “hidden”) sure proves that Bible verse wrong,” I lamented as I cursed Google Maps for having led me to a nondescript residential neighborhood in Santa Fe.  Though not as execrable as the time Google Maps insisted I make a left onto a crude and rocky dry wash when trying to get to Kayenta, Arizona, I nonetheless took Google’s name in vain then followed my instincts.  Fortunately, crossing over Agua Fria onto another neighborhood shed light on my quandrary.   There in front of me was Escondido, the restaurant destination I…

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Mixtli – San Antonio, Texas

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

A quote attributed to Marcel Marceau, the French mime famous for his sad-faced clown, aptly describes my attempts at describing a meal at Mixtli: “Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words”  (not that being without words has ever stopped me). Life’s events often include moments which move you deeply and stir your very soul. My inaugural dining experience at Mixtli was not so profound and cathartic as to move me to drastically change my life, but it certainly prompted a stirring awakening as I experienced what was conceivably the best restaurant meal I’ve ever had. Several of the other effusive reviews I’ve written are mere hyperbole in comparison to what I’d like to say…

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Sobremesa Restaurant & Brewery – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In June, 2021, Eater.com published a list of “the 21 Essential Restaurants in Albuquerque.” Unlike so many “clickbait” articles from national publications purporting to tell New Mexicans which restaurants across the Land of Enchantment serve the “best this” and the “best that,” the Eater feature was penned by Justin De La Rosa who actually knows this state very well.  In fact, in 2015 Justin earned a “Local Hero Award” from Edible New Mexico as “best food writer.” If you’re wondering what constitutes an “Essential Restaurant,” Eater’s erstwhile national critic Bill Addison defined the term to mean “indispensable to their neighborhoods, and eventually to their towns and whole regions,” to “ultimately become vital to how we understand ourselves, and others, at…

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La Zenita – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In his immortal play Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare used two lines to convey that the naming of things is irrelevant: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”   My friends Bruce and Loren Plata like to remind me that in Hebrew, the name “Gil” represents a “small goat,” an animal that definitely doesn’t smell quite as fragrant as a rose.  My retort, of course, is that “goat” is an acronym for “greatest of all time.”  So, relevant or not, names do have meanings and can provide a lifetime of notoriety.   Most of us just hope our names aren’t something that can be made fun of. In…

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Los Felix – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

As we strode into Los Felix on a windy Saturday in May, we espied a very attractive young lady pointing an extendable selfie stick at her face as she spoke a thousand words a minute.  “Great,” we figured “another self-absorbed Gen Xer sharing the mundane details of her day on social media.”  Boy were we wrong.  That young lady turned out to be Gaby Camez, a social media influencer who posts restaurant reviews on Facebook.  Gaby’s site, Comiendo Rico en Albuquerque, is a celebration of the Duke City’s Mexican restaurants. Even if you’re not fortunate enough to speak and understand Spanish, you’ll love her site, especially the enthusiasm and respect with which she treats a restaurant’s bounty.   When we got…

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Birrieria Y Tacos Alex Tijuana Style – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:01 PM

If you’ve noticed an increase in the number of recent visits on this blog to Mexican restaurants, credit much of that to Pati Jinich, ebullient host of the James Beard Award-winning and Emmy nominated PBS series Pati’s Mexican Table   Although we record the Saturday airing of Pati’s Mexican Table, we don’t usually watch it until Sunday…right before lunchtime.  It’s no wonder, therefore, that what we’ve been craving for lunch is Mexican food. It’s nigh impossible not to be utterly charmed (if not outright besotted) by the lovely Pati Jinich.   Her huge likeability quotient is the byproduct of a genuine warmth and self-effacing humor which come across with her every thickly-accented utterance.  She’s down-to-Earth and genuine, taking absolute joy in …

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El Chile Toreado – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Until 2008, the notion of gourmet culinary offerings being proffered by a mobile conveyance was unheard of.  Prior to then, food trucks were (often rightfully so) known as “roach coaches” or even worse “barf buggies.”  Roach coaches were an eyesore, a medium of last resort usually parked at construction sites, manufacturing plants, public parks or basic military training bases where captive trainees had no alternative.  Roach coaches were a pure convenience with no pretense to gourmet (or even good) cuisine.  Most of them hawked simple fare such as hot dogs and tacos as well as potato chips, cigarettes, candy and chewing gum. During the era of “convenience stores on wheels,” food trucks weren’t worried about building a brand.  Nor were…