Charlie’s Front Door – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)
For almost four and a half decades, Charlie Elias, an avuncular septuagenarian with the energy of a teenager, has greeted his customers and treated them like welcome guests at his eponymous Northeast Heights restaurant and bar. Charlie doesn’t always make it to work nowadays, but his son Jamie, who’s probably the same age today that Charlie was when I first discovered this long-time family favorite, is now the restaurant’s official ambassador, a smiling presence who meets and greets all patrons with the same homespun, genuine friendliness as his father. Charlie was thirty-something when he launched his Front and Back Door operation in 1966. That type of longevity is rare today and speaks volumes about the loyalty generations of patrons have…