Month: September 2007

Closed in 2012Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoPizza

Sandia Crust Pizza Company – Cedar Crest, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Deadheads and pizza have been inextricably tied since 1993 when (legend has it) an audacious pizza delivery boy absconded with several cassette tapes from Jerry Garcia’s kitchen counter.  It didn’t take long before late-night Grateful Dead radio programs around the country were playing second- and third-generation “dubs” of the rough mixes that have come to be known as “The Pizza Tapes.” The Pizza tapes featured the collaboration of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, mandolinist David Grisman and guitarist Tony Rice, all legendary figures in the music world.  The 12-song improvisation gives every indication that the session was warm, intimate and replete with the joyful spontaneity and rapport of friends not used to playing together but having a genuinely good time…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2008Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoThai

Tawan Thai Cuisine – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

Note: This review was written about a Tawan Thai Cuisine location in Rio Rancho that no longer exists. The original Tawan Thai at 200 Wyoming Blvd, S.E., also closed in late 2008. For Rio Rancho’s Thai cuisine aficionados the sky was bleak only briefly. The despair they felt after the closure of Hong Thai was replaced scant weeks later by elation at the August, 2007 launch of Tawan Thai Cuisine. With that launch, the sun began shining brightly as City of Vision residents could once again Thai one on. Tawan, the Thai word for sun, is quickly becoming a shining star (a sun) in the City of Vision’s restaurant scene. Ensconced in the nondescript Lujan Plaza, it is, for many…

AmericanArizonaBreakfast

El Tovar – Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Gil Garduno

When Spanish explorer García López de Cárdenas first laid eyes on the Grand Canyon, surely his reaction wasn’t “it’s just a great big hole in the ground.” That was the reaction of a friend of mine, who much like other modern Americans is so caught up in the trappings of pop culture and “technolust” that he’s lost the ability to be impressed by what it has taken nature millions of years to produce. It took some six million years for the Colorado River to create the multi-hued, steep-sided gorge that is today considered one of the natural wonders of the world.  The incomparable magnitude of the Colorado River’s handiwork certainly wasn’t lost on the Fred Harvey Company, the West’s most…

AmericanBreakfastNew MexicoNew Mexico Culinary Treasures Trail

El Rancho – Gallup, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

In the 1930s and 1940s, sometimes considered the halcyon days of Western movies, the Four Corners region was the site of many cinematic classics, quite a few featuring battles between the cavalry and “misplaced” American Indians.  Never mind that the Cheyenne and the Sioux actually lived hundreds of miles (and several states) away, the region’s dramatic topography was a perfect backdrop for cowboy conflicts with these Midwestern Indians. Besides that, Navajo “actors” were plentiful.  Producers would attire them in war bonnets, arm them with lances and hand them scripts in which they would invariably succumb to the “righteous might” of the charging cavalry. One movie, John Ford’s classic Cheyenne Autumn, featuring Navajo actors pretending to be Cheyenne, has an almost cult…