Gil's Thrilling (And Filling) Blog
Follow the Culinary Ruminations of New Mexico's Sesquipedalian Sybarite. 1,316 Restaurant Reviews, More Than 13,300 Visitor Comments…And Counting!
While ikigai (pronounced ee-key-guy) may sound like what grade school girls called me many years ago, in Japanese the term ikigai is a Japanese concept combining the terms “iki,” meaning “alive” or “life,” and “gai,” meaning “benefit” or “worth.” Though there is no direct English translation, when combined these terms…
It’s not easy being a gastronome about town when you make less than a thousand dollars a month and have a car payment, rent and a social life. Stationed at Kirtland in the early 1980s, my Air Force salary pretty much dictated that most of my meals were at the…
Shake the hand that shook the hand of…The Vitamin Kid. At 87-years young, the Vitamin Kid–once the fastest runner in Guadalupe County–has slowed down just a bit, but he’s still as sharp as a tack, retaining an encyclopedic memory of details that would make a great novel. Fittingly, a novel–specifically…
Throughout its storied history, Amarillo’s culinary reputation has been based primarily on one kind of food: beef. That’s no surprise considering Amarillo-area ranches produce thirty-percent of the nation’s beef and ninety-percent of the beef in Texas. So when the city on the High Plains is described as a “cow town,”…
During our last full year at Intel, my friend Bill Resnik and I had the distinct honor and privilege of working on a project with a team from Microsoft comprised mostly of information technology professionals with roots in the exotic subcontinent of India. We had expected impeccable technical expertise, but…
If you’ve ever wondered about the meaning of the line “I’ll be lookin’ for eight when they pull that gate” in George Strait’s classic hit Amarillo By Morning, here’s a theory you probably haven’t heard. The country crooner was actually looking for eight brawny guys to help him finish the…
Published in 1938, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novels ever written. Replete with timeless themes of struggle, destitution, injustice, and the pursuit of a delusive “Promised Land,” the novel centers around the trevails of the Joad family. Along with thousands of…
The Wikipedia article on Eastern New Mexico describes the region as “mostly characterized by flat featureless terrain,” even likening it to West Texas: “Like much of the Llano Estacado region, Eastern New Mexico is largely agricultural and resembles West Texas in geography, culture, economy, and demographics.” While Eastern New Mexico…
It’s so easy to be judgmental, to take things at face value…to assume. As my friend Bruce “Sr. Plata” Silver and I approached Mama Zahira Foodies’ order window, we espied the self-deprecating term “The Wacky Iraqi in Albuquerque” scrawled by the vehicle’s rear wheel well. The term “wacky” made us…
