Month: September 2009

Announcements

Gil’s Thrilling Blog Marks One-Year Anniversary

Gil Garduno8:00 PM

Very well,” replied the editor-in-chief. “Dine somewhere else to-day and somewhere else to-morrow. I wish you to dine everywhere, — from the Astor House Restaurant to the smallest description of dining saloon in the City, in order that you may furnish an account of all these places. The cashier will pay your expenses.” With that mandate, the editor-in-chief of the New York Times dispatched an uncredited gentleman on what might well be the very first restaurant review published not only in America’s largest metropolitan newspaper, but perhaps throughout the country.  The date was January 1, 1859. Today, nearly every major American newspaper employs a restaurant critic to critique the area’s restaurants and present their objective assessments in an eloquent and creative…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2015Gone But Not ForgottenNew Mexican

Albuquerque Tortilla Company Family Restaurant and Carry Out – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno8:15 PM

Fearful that her dim-witted and loose-lipped husband would tell everyone in the village his good fortune in having found three bags of gold, the woodcutter’s wife concocted a plan.  She had her husband buy her a one-hundred pound bag of flour and when he returned with the flour, she told him to lay down and rest for a while.  While her weary husband slept, the woman made tortillas from the entire one-hundred pound bag of flour, so many tortillas the stacks climbed to the ceiling.  She then carried the tortillas outside and threw them all over the ground. When the woodcutter woke up the next morning, he was amazed to find tortillas covering the ground.  His wife told him it…

AlbuquerqueAmericanClosed in 2009

Hurley’s Coffee, Tea and Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno2:01 PM

“May you have food and raiment, a soft pillow for your head. May you be forty years in heaven before the devil knows you’re dead.” — An Irish Blessing Cynics who used to deride Irish food as the worst in the planet would have cautioned you to say a prayer before you ate it, but not necessarily in Thanksgiving for what you were about to receive.  For years the Emerald Isle has captured the imagination with its numberless shades of lush greens, smooth as silk whiskey, stout Guinness beer and poetry that can bring you to the depths of desolation or the heights of alacrity.  What the land of saints, sinners and poets had not, until recently, ever been known…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2013Gone But Not ForgottenMariscosMexican

Mariscos La Playa – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno2:54 PM

While New Mexico has always had restaurants featuring the cuisine of the country of Mexitli of Tenochtitlan (Mexico), the distinction between Mexican and New Mexican cuisine has always been somewhat obfuscated.  There are a number of reasons for this. For as long as I remember, restaurants which serve cuisine we now recognize as uniquely New Mexican (characterized among other things by the use of piquant red and green chiles instead of jalapeno) have billed themselves as Mexican restaurants.  The term “New Mexican food,” is, in fact, relatively new as the Land of Enchantment has more recently taken an active stance in promoting its cuisine as something distinctly delicious and different than Mexican food. The situation has been exacerbated by ancianos (New Mexico’s elderly population), even the…