But the Lights of Albuquerque, will soon be shining bright,
Like a diamond in the desert, like a beacon in the night.
And I wonder if she’ll take me back, will she understand?
Will the Lights of Albuquerque, shine for me again?
Jim Glaser: The Lights of Albuquerque
Imagine yourself a weary traveler motoring along a two-lane blacktop half an hour west of Albuquerque. Moments ago, having espied a preternatural palette of colors on your mirror, you stopped to gaze in awe and wonder at the breathtaking sunset spraying the sky with vibrant reds, oranges, yellows and purples. Rejuvenated by the slow descent of the sun giving way to an ebony canopy speckled with twinkling stars, you resume your climb of Nine Mile Hill. At its summit, you’re rewarded with one of the most inspiring sights in the west as the lights of Albuquerque come into view. It’s a sight Elvis Presley enjoyed often during his travels across the country in his pink Cadillac.
The year is 1952. The closer you get to Albuquerque, the more prominent the neon-spangled lights become. Vibrant neon signage cuts a luminous swath through the city, beckoning motorists with unique roadside architecture and welcoming motor lodges. You’ll take in the sights tomorrow. Now you’re parched and hungry. Fortunately there are a number of promising restaurants on Albuquerque’s sprawling western expanse and you don’t have to leave the Mother Road to find them. Just beyond the Western View Diner at which you’ve previously dined, you catch sight of a nascent newcomer with an interesting name and a fatted cow over its signage. Mac’s La Sierra Coffee Shop it is.
Fast forward sixty-two years. Motorists rarely take the exit from I-40 that traverses the length and breadth of Route 66 through the Duke City. A visit to Mac’s La Sierra Coffee Shop would be a great reason to do so. Now a venerable elder statesman among Albuquerque’s restaurants, Mac’s is one of the city’s oldest continuously operating eateries. The reason for its success? Award-winning author Sharon Niederman contends that “no friendlier place exists along the entire road.” Friendliness and good food go a long way in Albuquerque.
Mac’s La Sierra no longer has the pristine look and feel that pulled in so many motorists during the waning days of Route 66. Peruse the parking lot and you’ll quickly notice that virtually every vehicle in the sprawling parking lot is festooned with license plates from the Land of Enchantment. Finding an empty parking spot is a challenge. That’s always a great sign. An external sign will whet your appetite with the promise of “Steaks, Mexican Food, Breakfast All Day.”
If the “seat yourself” sign is posted, you may have to visit every one of the restaurant’s three dining rooms (one of which is adorned with framed paintings of bullfighters) to find a vacant table. Seating is in personal space proximity. Mac’s La Sierra seems as popular with blue- and white-collar workers as it is with families and celebrities (including Steven Michael Quezada), many of whom are regulars who need not peruse the menu to know what they want. Breakfast Specials, including two south of four dollars, include short steak fingers and eggs. Steak fingers, a long-time specialty of the house, are deep-fried and coated ground beef shaped like a “finger.”
The menu is a veritable compendium of New Mexico coffee shop and diner favorites. That means a good mix of New Mexican specialties as well as American favorites. The breakfast specials are available from 6AM through 11AM, but you can have anything else all day long. That includes a 12-ounce New York cut. It’s a menu first-timers will want to study though a casual glance toward adjacent tables may be even more effective. Green chile adorned burritos, tamale plates and enchiladas are obvious favorites.
6 November 2014: You won’t be seated long before an attentive and friendly server visits your table. If, like me, your approach to New Mexican food is to precede your entree with an order of chips and salsa figuring you’ll be done with them before your entree arrives, Mac’s La Sierra will surprise you. You won’t be too far into your chips and salsa before your entree arrives–and it’s piping hot, too. Alas, the chips and salsa are too good to be rushed. The rich, red salsa has a bite. It’s a salsa to be enjoyed and respected. The chips are light, crisp and not overly salty.
11 November 2014: If you’re into threesomes, the Super Mac’s Combo is your hook-up. Available as an entree or a generously sized appetizer, this prodigious platter includes three steak fingers, three taquitos, three chicken fingers, French fries and guacamole. The steak fingers, a long-time restaurant staple, are lightly battered and well-seasoned. The guacamole is so much more than mashed avocados. it’s actually got a discernible though not overpowering heat. Only the taquitos missed the mark, the meat inside the rolled taco shell being more than a bit overdone.
6 November 2014: Every first-time visitor should order the Special Mexican Plate, a cheese enchilada, taco, beans and rice all covered with your choice of red or green chile (or both) with sopaipillas on the side. “Mexican” plate is a misnomer because this combination plate is New Mexican through and through. The tamale is the most special item on this special plate. It’s engorged with tender tendrils of red chile marinated pork enrobed in a sweet corn masa. The hard-shelled taco is stuffed with ground beef and shredded cheese (none of the oft-annoying preponderance of lettuce and tomatoes). You’re free to add the contents of a plastic squeeze bottle of salsa. The enchilada and beans are top shelf quality, too. Both the red and green chile have a nice bite and endorphin-enhanced addictive properties. Everything is served steaming hot the way it should be.
11 November 2014: There aren’t many restaurants whose menus include fried chicken so my Kim tends to order it whenever she finds it. At Mac’s La Sierra there’s a 25-minute wait time for the chicken to be prepared. It’s served with coleslaw, your choice of soup or salad and your choice of potato (baked, mashed or French fries). Alas, the fried chicken delivered to our table was overly breaded and a bit rubbery (a sign it’s been overcooked). While that may have been an anomaly, we probably won’t order it again considering the New Mexican food has been consistently good.
11 November 2014: Consider it heretical if you will, but it’s entirely possible to have too much red chile on an entree. That’s the case with the tamale plate, three meaty tamales covered with your choice of red or green chile. Here “covered” means practically deluged and overrun with chile. While the chile is good and has a pleasant piquancy, it overwhelms the masa sheathing, which despite being marinated in chile tends to have a rather delicate flavor profile. You’ll find yourself shoveling the chile onto the beans and rice so you can enjoy the tamales light on chile the way they should be.
6 November 2014: The sopaipillas are light and puffy with airy pockets perfect for depositing honey. Alas, they’re served with squeeze bottles of “sopaipilla syrup” (which some taste bud deprived genius–probably from the government–figured would fool diners) instead of real honey. If you do ask for honey, your server will gladly bring a number of small packets of honey, the type of which are annoyingly challenging to open. Despite the challenge for ham-fingered diners like me, honey is still the only way to go.
18 January 2019: It would be easy to dismiss chicken fried steak as cheap, plebeian food for the masses…as if anything so good and comforting could possibly be plebeian. Chicken fried steak wasn’t always perceived as mere, pedestrian diner food. There was a time–not that long ago in fact–that chicken fried steak was given the same esteem typically reserved for such fine-dining cuisine as prime rib, lobster thermidor and deviled crab au gratin. During the annual meeting of the National Restaurant Association in 1942, the rank and file compiled a list of America’s top ten favorite restaurant dishes. Chicken fried steak ranked number three (ahead of the aforementioned fine-dining staples).
My friend Bruce “Sr. Plata” Silver, keeper of Sr. Plata’s Chicken Fried Steak Trail, probably would have put chicken fried steak at the very top of any list. He and I have traversed the length and breadth of the Duke City in pursuit of the city’s best. We should have visited Mac’s La Sierra long before we did. For a day’s worth of calories, carbohydrates and deliciousness, Mac’s chicken fried steak plate just can’t be beaten. A hefty chicken fried steak smothered in country gravy and served with two eggs any style, hash browns, toast and jelly. While the menu admonishes “no substitutions,” the genial servers are quick to push the sopaipillas as a substitute for toast. Good call! The chicken fried steak is pounded into a tender slab then breaded lightly so that its golden hue just beckons–or at least the part that isn’t covered by the glorious country gravy with its peppery influence.
Mac’s La Sierra is one of those rare restaurants which transcends time thanks to a time-proven formula of great food, great service and great value…just the way it was during the era of Route 66.
Mac’s La Sierra Coffee Shop
6217 Central Avenue, S.W.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(505) 836-1212
Web Site
LATEST VISIT: 18 January 2019
1st VISIT: 6 November 2014
# OF VISITS: 3
RATING: 18
COST: $$
BEST BET: Special Mexican Plate, Salsa and Chips, Sopaipillas, Super Mac Combo, Tamale Plate, Chicken Fried Steak
People have purchase food from there for me without my request and yes it is good but today is the first time I went in there didn’t know how things were set up but I was yelled at and they were disrespectful to me maybe it was the way I was dressed just getting off of work but I will never go back there again and I will never want food from there again if that’s the way their staff is I’m not a bum but maybe I looked like one I’m not an idiot but I was treated like one sad because I just wanted to add onion rings to my order that my fiance already went in and ordered what we were going to eat but so much distaste for this establishment I will give my food to the dog I already told them about my issue and they were apologetic and so forth but that’s no reason to treat me as I was treated when I said I didn’t need this treatment one of the ladies told me goodbye and laughed I will never go into this place again never and I will tell people about my experience I’m a general contractor and I know a lot of people they ask me I will tell the truth I don’t know about the other Mac’s but Sierra was definitely an ugly experience
I’m sorry that happened to you, but I would contend that you maybe went on an off day or there’s some of the story missing. Many of the regulars who go there are dressed very humbly, so I’m a bit surprised to hear they would judge someone based on their appearance. They aren’t the biggest on substitutions. Was it maybe something about the way you approached them about subbing the onion rings? Pre-COVID days, Mac’s was my go to New Mexican place to go to with my family. Not necessarily because they have the best New Mexican food (for that I’d say get select offerings from either NM Beef Jerky Co, Mary & Tito’s, or of course your abuela’s house), but because each time I’ve been it’s been the friendliest atmosphere from both patrons and employees.
An excellent example of the friendliness is when I visited the October before last. I was going to Mac’s with my family a day before I was set to visit Vietnam for a month. One of the best part’s about Mac’s is getting their sopaipillas, so I was a bit bummed when they told us they just ran out. My parents were joking with the server and giving her a bit of a hard time (all in good fun), letting her know that I was about to leave the country for a month and was really looking forward to some sopas. About 5 minutes later she came by to let us know some of the other patrons heard our plight and generously offered their extra sopaipillas. And it wasn’t just one kind table, it was several of them. Any other restaurant I would have been completely flabbergasted and a bit uncomfortable likely, but honestly though it had never happened before I wasn’t too surprised since it was just in line with the sort of friendliness at Mac’s.
Regardless, it is a bummer to hear you were far from satisfied with your visit at Mac’s. Obviously I can’t convince you that you’re wrong about how your visit went, but I would honestly be surprised if your disparaging words will have any dent in their business. Mac’s is very much a hole in the wall diner that thrives on the business of long time regulars, and anyone who’s been even once would likely say their experience was quite the opposite of yours.
Wow, 5 years since the last review here, not sure why. Continued and getting close to finalizing the chicken fried steak trail and I must say the gravy here when you mix with the requested green chile is quite good. The steak, I enjoyed but alas, still not big enough for Sr Plata to walk away fulfilled. I had the usual 2 fried eggs and hash browns, mixed together with a little green chile, which was nice. Gil and I shared an order of the steak fingers, unfortunately I am thinking of Mac’s Steak in the Rough and this was no Mac’s. Anyways, I would like to come back, Gil said the pancakes were really good. This place was hopping with just regular people on Central and I felt part of the community…
I’m disappointed when I order tacos and they come in a “shell” It’s not that hard to fry corn tortillas and that makes the taco so much better. I was raised with home made tortillas and I guess that spoiled me. If you really want a treat have a Gordita which is similar to a corn tortilla except it’s thicker and works like a pita in that you cut the edge so you can open it and fill it with meat etc. Some make them on a comal and others will fry them. A good Gordita is hard to find in Albuq.
Bobo, which talent do you and others possess that I don’t regarding eating a hard cased taco that prevents it from cracking.
Perhaps you could teach a course in hard taco eating for those of us who are not among the chosen. Do you remove you dentures and gum them into submission?
By the way, when did the term “frat” come back into vogue? It is not used by the fraternity community these days.
And am I mistaken or did I not hear the faint strains of the Star Spangled banner softly playing as you told your story.
El Brute confesses: “I have never had a hard taco that didn’t fall apart at first bite.” Aye chee hua huah El Brute: some of us have a natural talent to prevent that and some of us…admittedly [and Bravo for that]….do not!!!
Beyond that and Thanks for asking about “….college at 17!” Yo, I was accepted into so called kindergarten at the age at 2 1/2 per my Mom working a sewing machine in a mill making ankle protectors for paratroopers ankles during WW II due to my Dad being off making his way through horrid jungles to meet up with General MacArthur (of “I shall return” fame) to free Manila and the camps holding the USofA reservists (who had gallantly held off the Japanese of the day from gaining an edge after Pearl Harbor) of the Bataan Death March. I can only guess that rather than risk liability suits per entering nubile students, the good Polish Nuns advanced me into the 1st Grade after holding me back (only per statuatory requirements)for two plus years whereby I nevertheless ended up my eventual academic advancements to be accepted at 17 to a top US university…USC!!! I might add that it was the astute recognition by Agents of Mexico’s Border Patrol of my “superiority” (in stark contrast to today’s apparent nitwits) that I was allowed in to Mexico to shop for Christmas Gifts a month before my legal entry age of 18, way back when.
Given a choice between hard tacos and soft tacos I would opt for soft everytime. I have never had a hard taco that didn’t fall apart at first bite. Until I had soft tacos made by my daughter’s mother in law I wouldn’t have even known there was the soft option. It seems like a no-brainer. A soft pliable taco, easy to eat without the crumbling and bumbling caused by the hard taco.
As a relative newbie to the pleasures of tacos I’m not sure, even as I comment, that I’m talking about something I know about.
One remark about BOTVOLR’s comment: Is it correct to assume (yeah, I know the pitfalls of assuming)( that Bobo was in college at 17? And already in a “frat”, perhaps the fabled Aye Phelta Thi? And was he waxing poetic about tacos as if they were The Beav?
For me, I guess I’m influenced by “my first time”! I was only 17 and it was about 9:30PM while also experiencing my first time with Santa Ana winds: the night air is cool and then a warmth envelopes you only to disappear, i.e. producing an ethereal/eerie sensation. My Frat Brothers took me for a study break to a ‘hole-in-the-wall’…a trailer with a window…on South Vermont in LA!
It was my very first delicious HARD Taco!
~ My fuzzy memory of later in the ’70s, was my late Vieja quick frying corn tortillas to make a hard taco and the frustration of trying to hold it open while filling it and then laying it on a platter to only have most of the filling fall out. Later the shells-in-a-box came into being and while helpful, there was still the challenge. Someplace along the way, someone came up with a wire rack to set several shells in for filling. Finally, it doesn’t get any better than the creation of the flat-bottomed taco shell http://tinyurl.com/ldxwg9v allowing ease of filling and serving!!!!
Bottom line: A Hard Shell Taco would be my first choice if I couldn’t have one of these: http://tinyurl.com/oyqkcyo
I know you asked Tom, but I’ll interject here. 😛
I think it is extremely hard to generalize when it comes to tacos.
For instance, the soft flour tortilla tacos at El Taco Tote are really good, while the street tacos (made with corn tortilla) at Taco Cabana are almost as good. Add in the soft flour tortilla tacos from Cocina Azul, and soft flour seems to be the front runner. However, you can’t ignore the carnitas tacos from Ceasar’s Greek and Mexican Restaurant that use soft corn tortilla.
Soft seems to win out most often, but as long as the shells are homemade and not the pre-packaged variety, hard-shell tacos can be quite tasty. Perico’s come to mind, but I’m sure I’ve had hard-shell tacos as part of Combination plates that were really good. Again, it has to be a homemade shell, not the pre-packaged variety.
Bottom line, if the taco is homemade, hard or soft, chances are you are in for a treat!
Gil,
What’s your opinion of soft taco vs hard taco? Corn or wheat tortilla?
Gustavo Arellano, whom the New York Times described as “perhaps the greatest (and only) living scholar of Mexican-American fast food” opines that “the worst “soft taco” is 1,000 times better than the best hard shell taco created by mass-produced hard shells.” It’s an opinion I wholeheartedly share. Arellano’s terrific tome Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America is a must read for foodies interested in the evolution of Mexican food across the fruited plain.
When visiting a restaurant featuring New Mexican cuisine my preference is for flour tortillas though there isn’t a restaurant anywhere whose tortillas compare to those from my mom’s comal. If the restaurant specializes in Mexican cuisine, it’s always corn tortillas, but these are not absolutes. Some entrees (tacos, enchiladas) are better tailored for corn and others (burritos) for flour tortillas.
Unless ameliorated by preservatives, wheat tortillas seem to have a rather short shelf life and don’t retain their freshness as long as flour or corn tortillas.
What about you, Tom? What are your tortilla preferences?
Growing up in northern California in the 60s, tacos meant a package of hard shells from a supermarket.
Moving to LA in the 80s, the “Tex-Mex” craze hit and I was knocked-out by small flour tortillas that you folded over in the shape of a change purse. Never like wheat tortillas much, and yes, they do mold the fastest.
Today, I like flour tortillas in general, and smaller corn tortillas for tacos.