Month: July 2021

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2021Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoRated 23Thai

Siam Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

It’s oft been said that “you taste first with your eyes.”  Certainly sight figures in to the enjoyment of food and sets expectations, but the first sensory receptors to engage in taste is the sense of smell.  If you’ve ever experienced a pleasant aroma wafting toward you as you approach a restaurant, you’ll agree.  The Siam Cafe is quite possibly the most aromatically-enticing, olfactory-arousing restaurant in the Duke City.  Its exotic spices and herbs waft like a gentle summer breeze over all diners entering what is conceivably Albuquerque’s best Thai restaurant. For years the marquee named its previous occupant, Pollo Loco, before the owners of the Siam Cafe finally changed the marquee in 2003. With its new signage, this gem declared…

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Dogos VIP – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Thanks largely to a 1974 Chevrolet commercial and its catchy tune, the phrase “As American as baseball, hot dogs and apple pie” has purportedly defined what Americans hold most sacrosanct.  Never mind that hot dogs are derivative of European sausages, they’re inextricably part of the fabric of the fruited plain. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (yes, there is such a thing) estimates that Americans eat seven billion hot dogs (so it’s not just me) during the unofficial summer season which runs from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day. That’s 818 hot dogs per second and more than a third of the hot dogs eaten per year! July 19th has been designated National Hot Dog Day, but a case…

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Urban 360 Pizza, Grill and Tap House – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Babu: Our specials are tacos, moussaka and franks and beans. Jerry: Well, what do you recommend my good fellow? Babu:Oh, the turkey. ~”The Cafe, Seinfeld, Season 3, Episode 7 While perusing the menu at Urban 360 Pizza, Grill and Tap House, my ever-witty friend Ryan “Break the Chain” Scott commented that the menu reminded him of The Dream, the very eclectic restaurant owned and operated by Pakistan emigrant Babu Bhatt in an uproariously funny episode of Seinfeld. As Jerry Seinfeld observed about The Dream’s menu, “he’s serving Mexican, Italian, Chinese. He’s all over the place.” Urban 360’s menu is similarly diverse, a melange of Asian, American and European dishes splayed temptingly onto three pages. That the menu is so “all…

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Hollow Spirits Distillery – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.” ~Edward De Bono The Land of Enchantment boasts of some 3,500 restaurants, more than 1,000 of which are members of the New Mexico Restaurant Association (NMRA).  Keen competition from among hundreds of outstanding chefs throughout the Land of Enchantment makes being named the NMRA’s Chef of the Year quite an honor.  Read the resume of 2020 Chef of the Year recipient Tristin Rogers  and you just might conclude he didn’t just deserve Chef of the Year honors; he’s worthy of “person of the year” recognition, too.  He doesn’t just transform great ingredients into great meals.  He’s transforming lives and bettering the community.…

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Storming Crab – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Archaeologists believe there’s a scientific explanation for contemporary  humankind’s  predilection for seaside vacations and trips to the beach.  Evidence–stone tools used to cut through animal flesh–seems to support the theory that the first humans migrated out of Africa by following the eastern coastline.  This, the theory posits, would have led to Australia being discovered before Europe.  As noted by Professor Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London: “The earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe is 40,000 years old whereas we find evidence dating to 60,000 years ago in Australia.  This (migrating along Africa’s eastern coastline) provides a possible explanation.” In addition to the tools used by our beachcombing ancestors, the archaeologists found…

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Taco Bus – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Perhaps no mobile conveyance in the Land of Enchantment has ferried as many interesting people on as many colorful journeys as the “Road Hog,” the psychedelic bus which shuttled its passengers from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock to Llano Largo, New Mexico. The Road Hog’s 1969 arrival in Llano Largo heralded the start of the “summer of the hippie invasion” as The Taos News called it. There unwashed masses settled into a Utopian agrarian commune they called the Hog Farm. The Road Hog with its familiar duck hood ornament and Grateful Dead-style tie-dyed design became a common sight in Peñasco, my childhood home.   Everyone–from sanctimonious adults to horny teenagers–visited the Hog Farm.  The former feigned shock and outrage at the audacity of…

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Waffology – Corrales, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

FROM WAFFOLOGY’S FACEBOOK PAGE: We regret to announce our final closing. We fought hard and we appreciate all of you who came alongside us. February 5th will be our last day serving from 9am-6pm. In an article for New Mexico Magazine, scintillating four-time James Beard award-winning author Cheryl Alters Jamison proclaimed “Pity the folks who think breakfast is a bowl of cornflakes or some granola and yogurt—talk about starting the day with a yawn! I’m here to tell you that the best, most bodacious wake-up food, bar none, is New Mexico’s breakfast burrito. It doesn’t just break the fast, it blasts it.”  Cheryl may not have called out other American breakfast staples.  She didn’t need to. When my friend Bruce…