As an essayist of the New Mexico culinary condition, it’s easy to be lured in by new restaurants, those bright and shiny beacons of promise. Sadly, critics (and those of us who play them in movies and television) gravitate toward new restaurants with the expectation of newness, something heretofore different and amazing. We often do this at the expense of tried-and-true, established and proven restaurants which haven’t ever let us down. For every new restaurant I visit, there are hundreds of old favorites to which I don’t return often enough. One such personal favorite is Scarpas, a long-time fixture on Academy. Prior to our visit in January, 2023, our previous visit was in December, 2006. That’s far too long! Academy has been home to Scarpas since entrepreneur and restaurant impresario Jim Schumacher opened it in 1995. For years later, he opened a second Scarpas, this one on Montgomery. Schumaker, you might remember, was the long-time owner of The Cooperage, a Lomas mainstay since 1976. In 2020, Joe Sommers, a Scarpas employee from day one, purchased the restaurant from Schumacher. Not too much later, The Cooperage shut down for good. In 2021, year two of year the world’s nightmare, the Montgomery…
This place is horrible!!!!! I love beer and was visiting New Mexico on business, I love to visit new breweries so figured I would give this one a try since I had such a good experience at Kelly’s Brew pub in New Mexico the day before. Lets just keep it simple and straight to the point, the beer was ok not much of a variety, the service was bad and my legendary nachos were luke warm with cold sirloin which there was only two peices. This place is a joke and I would not recomend this place to my worst enemy!!!!!!!!!
RPL is pretty observant. There is no way that the item in the photo is Texas Red chili, the only place in Albuquerque to get a decent bowl (yes-a bowl’ not a plate) is in my kitchen (yes is does have cumin but I sneak a little green chile into).
Culinary sensuist (nice label, Gil) Larry has never been to Marble Brewery. I do love their brews, and drink them wherever I find them. Corrales Bistro Brewery keeps Marble IPA on tap.
I also try to keep some Marble in my beer refrigeration unit . For yesterday’s Super Bowl (not to be confused with the RRFB’s Souper Bowl), I swigged some Marble Red. Wonderful stuff.
And yes, I do love Nexus. Perhaps you and I should go there some day, and we should take a tea-totaler driver. Andrea liked the fish tacos.
Great observation! We definitely ordered Chama chili and until you mentioned it, that’s what I assumed we got. Upon further review, we appear to have been served a hybrid. The menu describes the Marble Nachos as “a layer of tortilla chips, Chama chili and spicy queso.” The Chama chili is “Texas-style chili made with cubes of sirloin simmered with pinto beans and red chile and served with homemade tortilla chips.” Our dish definitely had a layer of tortilla chips, Chama chili (including the cubes of sirloin) and pinto beans, but it also had the spicy queso.
Gil, I don’t like to comment on a place I have not been to, but your picture in the review, labeled Chama Chili, looks more like Marble’s website description of Marble Nachos to me. No meat, and lots of Queso in the photo. Is this a mixup? I might eat this for a Nacho dish, but would be disappointed if it were served to me as Chili.