Category: Italian

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Rustico Italian Kitchen – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

What does it say about a restaurant when it runs out of food?  Nine times out of ten, you’d probably say it’s either brand new and doesn’t yet have a feel for its traffic volume or their inventory management just isn’t very good.  Our inaugural visit to Rustico Italian Kitchen on a bright Sunday morning introduced us to another reason.  The restaurant was so busy the previous night that diners polished off everything on the menu save for pizza and salad.  For denizens of Albuquerque’s far northeast heights, that’s actually reason for celebration.  It means outstanding Italian food has finally…

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Urbano Pasta Kitchen – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:14 AM

“To break bread together,” a phrase as old as the Bible, captures the power of a meal to forge relationships, bury anger, provoke laughter.” ~The Joy of Food From National Geographic Sharing a meal creates a unique sense of intimacy felt by all who sit together at the table.  It’s an act that can spark new friendships, solidify lifetime bonds and serve as the backdrop for new memories.   Dining together is the most communal and binding action humans can take–an act The Atlantic describes  as “a quintessential human experience.”  It’s a universal act that transcends cultures, borders and geopolitical…

ArizonaDog FriendlyItalianRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

Fat Ox – Scottsdale, Arizona

Gil Garduno10:26 AM

In the Alpine village of Carrù in the Piedmont region of Italy stands the “Monumento al Bue Grasso” (monument to a fat ox).  Depicting two fat oxen under yoke, the monument celebrates the beast of burden so important to the region.  December’s ‘Fiera del Bue Grasso’ (festival of the fat ox) brings together tens of thousands of visitors who come to gaze at the oxen and eat copious amounts of deliciously warming tripe soup and boiled beef, washed down with a milled wine.   Farmers from throughout the region truck their oxen into town to show them off and vie…

ArizonaDiners Drive-Ins and DivesDog FriendlyItalianPizzaRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

DeFalco’s Deli: Italian Eatery & Grocery – Scottsdale, Arizona

Gil Garduno5:27 PM

My Kim usually leaves the recitation of movie or television quotes to me (apparently it’s a guy thing), but every once in a while she’ll surprise me with an utterance or exclamation she could have picked up only from the big screen or idiot box.  When we strode into DeFalco’s Italian Eatery & Grocery, she approached an employee and–doing her best to channel New Jersey mobster Tony Soprano–asked “where’s da gabagool?”.  She had no intention of buying gabagool and doesn’t even like the stuff much.  The moment just seemed appropriate.   Here we were in an Italian grocery brimming with…

New MexicoPizzaRating: N/R (Not Rated)

Placitas Pizza – Placitas, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:02 PM

Back in the 1960s before the world was “woke” a catchy television jingle painted a pretty bleak picture: “Aunt Jemima pancakes without her syrup.  It’s like the spring without the fall.  There’s only one thing worse in the universe.  That’s no Aunt Jemima at all.”  Frankly, there’s one thing worse than Aunt Jemima pancakes without her syrup.  That would be a village with no pizza.  A Village With No Pizza.  Doesn’t that sound like a horror story about a dystopic place where residents are haunted by insatiable cravings for an essential food group?  In actuality, that horrific situation described the…

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AK Pizza – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:36 AM

“I hate it. I think it’s an abomination. There are so many awesome things here, I don’t know why that should be featured. It’s leading with your weakness. So much other great stuff.” ~Anthony Bourdain What could have rankled the ire of the world renowned celebrity chef, master raconteur and social activist?  Was it an injustice in dire need of exorcising?  Dystopian horrors in a faraway third-world country?  Devaluation of life?  Bringing to light those suffering in the dark?  No, my friends.  It wasn’t the broken world Bourdain railed against.  It was something much more apolitical…unless you’re talking about the…

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FORGHEDABOUDIT SOUTHWEST ITALIAN – Las Cruces, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno6:12 PM

Genius, it’s oft been said, is ninety-nine-percent perspiration and one-percent inspiration.  Apply that equation to Bob Yacone and you’d be selling him far short.  So would the cliche “giving one-hundred-percent.”  Add a few more hundred percents–for heart, intellect, intuition and confidence–and you’d be approaching what makes him one of the most talented chefs in the Southwest. Let’s break down just a few of the aspects of the totality that is über chef Bob Yacone. Let’s start with his intellect, both in strategic “big picture” thinking (such as pioneering the revolutionary Southwest Italian concept which we’ll discuss later) and in making…

Dog FriendlyNew MexicoPizzaRating: N/R (Not Rated)

Mamacita’s Pizza – Abiquiu, New Mexico

Gil Garduno10:58 AM

If you’re up north in the Abiquiu area perusing Yelp because you’re jonesing for New Mexican food, would you heed the recommendations–good or bad–of someone from Mississippi or Delaware or Texas?  No way!  You’d look at reviews written by savvy New Mexicans.  They’ll steer you right, probably to El Farolito in El Rito (15 miles away) or Angelina’s in Espanola (27 miles away). With all due apologies to my fellow New Mexicans, when we visited Abiquiu and were curious about a rather famous pizzeria, we didn’t put much stock in Yelp reviews written by denizens of the Land of Enchantment. …

New MexicoPizzaRating: N/R (Not Rated)

Cafe Rio Pizza – Ruidoso, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:57 AM

You might think that a beautiful town whose very name translates from Spanish to “noisy” would be boisterous and braggadocious abut all there is to see and do in that town.  Not so according to writer Tania Casselle.  Penning a piece for New Mexico Magazine Tania contends that “Ruidoso flies under a lot of people’s radar, even though regular vacationers are intensely loyal—and probably don’t want too many people to know about it.” Whether or not it truly it truly flies under a lot of people’s radar, Ruidoso is indeed an idyllic location, an enchanted mountain oasis of incomparable beauty. …

AlbuquerquePizzaRating: Very Good

Saggios – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno4:11 AM

Where in New Mexico can you go to see his eminence Pope John Paul, II pontificate to Zorba the Greek, Anthony Quinn? Where can you go to see nattily attired cowboy John Wayne cavorting in a cerulean swimming pool with the material girl herself? Where can you find Beetlejuice perched on a saguaro, looking on as other luminaries (including the Beatles and the Supremes) enjoy the pristine waters by the intersection of Central and Cornell Avenues? Only on the imaginative tromp-l’oeil murals which festoon the walls at Saggios can you engage in such fantasy. The fantasy world begins on the…

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Lava Rock Brewing Company – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno6:28 PM

NOTE:  The Lava Rock Brewing Company is no longer affiliated with M’Tucci’s.  The review below remains online for your reading pleasure, but please don’t use it as a guide to the restaurant’s menu. Mark Twain, who quit school at age twelve after having completed the sixth grade, would go on to be widely acknowledged as the father of American literature.  Despite being largely self-taught–valedictorian of the school of hard knocks and salutatorian of street smarts–Twain acknowledged in his posthumously published essay “Taming the Bicycle” that the self-taught man “seldom knows anything accurately” and “does not know a tenth of as…