Gil's Thrilling (And Filling) Blog
Follow the Culinary Ruminations of New Mexico's Sesquipedalian Sybarite. 1240 Restaurant Reviews, More Than 12,300 Visitor Comments…And Counting!
“If salt is the odorless spice, smoke is the ephemeral magical invisible spice. You can’t feel it, you can’t touch it, but you can taste it.” ~Chef Seamus Mullen, Tertulia Restaurant, New York City. Have you ever wondered why some people drool when they pass by a computer displaying a fireplace screen saver? They’re not thinking about romance. They’re thinking
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“Ancient spirits dwell in New Mexico, since before the existence of humanity.” – The Husband: A Novel by Dean Koontz FROM THE ANCIENT SPIRITS BLOG ON JULY 17: Due to unforeseen circumstances Ancient Spirits Bar and Grille has had to close its doors. We have lost one of our owner/investors and are searching for someone to take his place. We
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The very best restaurants–those we’re proud to call our favorites–aren’t always the swankiest and most elegant venues. They’re not even usually the restaurants you visit on special occasions. They’re our favorites because for the duration of our meal, all our cares dissipate and our faith that everything will be okay is restored as we’re fed comforting, delicious food by servers
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The ingredients with which you can top your pizza are limited only by your imagination. Crocodile and caviar? Been there, done that. In fact, a New York restaurateur will sell you a thousand dollar pie topped with four of the priciest caviars in the world. Blueberries, shrimp, cookies? That’s pretty tame stuff. A Swiss-based pizza chef laces his pizza with
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Rey’s Place has relocated and now shares space with La Familar, the terrific Mexican restaurant owned by Michael “Rey’s” lovely bride Luz. La Familiar is located at 1611 4th Street, N.W. Its menu includes all the wonderful foods you’ve loved for years at Rey’s Place: gorditas, enchiladas, caldo de rez and so much more. Whether you visit for excellent Mexican
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Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield offered the following advice to his son: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, focusing on a singular task was not
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A few years ago at the urging of an obviously taste-deprived, chain restaurant loving colleague, I had breakfast at a misnomer of a restaurant named Goody’s, a now defunct restaurant on Yale. He bragged about Goody’s breakfast burrito being as good as Milton’s Family Restaurant, sacrilege if it was ever uttered. A business trip provided the opportune time to debunk
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Update: In a twist of cruel irony, the Travel Channel’s May 13th airing of the Burger Land program celebrating the Bobcat Bite debuted just a few days after the announcement that the world-famous Bobcat Bite as we all know and love it will be forever changed. An official statement from Bobcat Bite, issued on May 9th, announced the restaurant renowned
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Growing up in bucolic Peñasco back when fires were still started by rubbing two sticks together and mastodons roamed the Earth, I distinctly remember hearing playmates uttering the term “going all the way to Timbuktu.” Considering we all thought Albuquerque was a million miles away, we couldn’t imagine just how far away Timbuktu must be. Some of us reasoned it
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“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” – William Shakespeare Certainly as a lexicologist, the Bard of Avon should know darned well that what something is named does matter…or maybe not so much. In Waco, Texas, a burger joint has eschewed politically correctness by calling itself “Fat Ho Burgers.”
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As the end of an year draws near, the inclination to reflect on the closing year seems natural. Auld lang syne practically resonates from the pages of most periodicals as they reflect on the year that was with writers providing their year-end retrospectives. Quite naturally my favorite reflections are of New Mexico’s continuously evolving, culturally vibrant and deliciously diverse culinary
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Some of the world’s most elegant and refined cuisine has its genesis in very humble circumstances. Today, Spanish tapas are widely regarded as sophisticated and exotic, but they didn’t start off that way. In fact, Spanish tapas are an excellent embodiment of the axiom that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade. The words “tapa” (singular) or “tapas”
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When it comes to food, most bowling alleys strike out. Ardent keglers are subjected to such catastrophic “cuisine” as perpetually rotating hot dogs seared to a leathery sheen under a heat lamp inferno, soppy messes of nachos bathed in gloppy processed cheese topped with gelatinous jalapeños and greasy onion rings with the texture of fried rubber bands and as oily as well-slicked
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When many of us think of romantic destinations to visit or in which to honeymoon, our choices probably mirror closely those of US News & World Report which listed among their 22 best honeymoon destinations such exotic locations as Kauai, Maui, Florence, Crete, Santorini and even Las Vegas, Nevada. The authors apparently didn’t think enchantment is synonymous with romance or
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There was a time the name “Hilton” didn’t conjure up images of a ditzy blonde airhead whose celebrity is based largely on promiscuity. On second thought, maybe not. More than 50 years ago, another ditzy blonde temptress, Zsa Zsa Gabor honeymooned at Albuquerque’s Hilton Hotel with her then husband Conrad Hilton, a New Mexico native and founder of the historic
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“The older you get, the less cool you are.” At least that’s what my some of my twenty-something-year-old colleagues have told me when I’m not able to relate to the conventional mindset of the Y-generation (usually on matters such as what constitutes flexible work schedules and professional business attire). If the term “fuddy duddy” wasn’t so uncool, that’s probably what
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