Tag: Breakfast

BreakfastBreakfast BurritosBrunchLas CrucesNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Waffles

A Bite of Belgium – Las Cruces, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Jerry: “Don’t you know what it means to become an orgy guy? It changes everything. I’d have to dress different. I’d have to act different. I’d have to grow a mustache and get all kinds of robes and lotions and I’d need a new bedspread and new curtains I’d have to get thick carpeting and weirdo lighting. I’d have to get new friends. I’d have to get orgy friends. … Naw, I’m not ready for it.” ~Seinfeld In the sixth season of Seinfeld, Jerry is dating Sandy, a “non-laugher” who seems unamused by his jokes. When Jerry goes to Sandy’s apartment he meets Laura, her roommate, who laughs at his jokes.  Almost as important to the superficial Jerry, she’s very attractive. Jerry tells George he wants to break up with Sandy and date Laura. Jerry and George brainstorm how to accomplish “the roommate switch“. After hours of mulling that challenge, George suggests Jerry propose a ménage à trois. Sandy will be disgusted, break up with Jerry, and tell Laura, who will feel flattered, paving the way for Jerry to ask her out. However, both Sandy and Laura agree to the ménage à trois.  A  shocked and scared Jerry backs out.…

AlbuquerqueAmericanRating: Very Good

Jimmy’s Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:39 AM

The first (and probably most important) English words my parents taught me before my first day of school were “May I please go to the restroom?”.  That simple phrase was the beginning of my love-hate relationship with the English language.  English can be a confounding language if it’s your primary language, but learning it as a second language is brutal.  I thought I’d never pick up the  many complicated sets of rules (and their variations) governing how English is spoken and written.  English remains a challenge for me to this day (and for exposing you to my multitudinous grammatical fox paws and malapropisms, I sincerely apologize). Even English names were a challenge to learn because many of them have diminutive counterparts which don’t make much sense. For John, it’s Jack; for William, it’s Bill and for James, it’s Jim. It’s no wonder I was so confused when President John F. Kennedy was also called Jack and actor Jimmy Stewart was also referred to as James.  In New Mexican Spanish, our diminutives are much simpler.  For male names, we simply add “ito” to the end of a name (Juanito, Estevanito, etc.).  Similarly, add “ita” to a female name (Andreita, Carmelita) and you’ve got its…

2024 James Beard Foundation "Best Chef - Southwest" SemifinalistBakeryJames Beard Foundation (JBF) Award Nominees & WinnersNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Santa FeSlovak

Dolina – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:02 AM

For my dad, a professional educator for thirty years, it wasn’t enough that his children learned how to spell cat, dog and all the other traditional first words kids learn to spell in school.  He taught us how to spell Czechoslovakia, rhinoceros, aesthetic and other multisyllabic words.  He also taught us what those words meant.  Being kids, we giggled when he taught us about Lake Titicaca in the Andes of Bolivia, but marveled at its size and altitude.  Because of his teaching, one of my sisters could (at age seven) recite the alphabet backwards as quickly as most people can recite it forward.  Two of my sisters were double-promoted and both finished high school as valedictorians. My dad didn’t teach his precocious brood so we could show off in school, but to inculcate a love of learning.  It’s served the six of us very well.  Every one of my brothers and sisters has been highly successful in their chosen professions and in life (I’m the family dunce).   You might think learning about Czechoslovakia didn’t have any value, but it gave me a lifetime of curiosity about other nations and cultures.  It’s a curiosity that extends to the cuisine of exotic…

AlbuquerqueBarbecueClosed in 2026Gone But Not ForgottenMexicanNew Mexico

La Sirenita – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Our friends, John Martin and Lynn Garner and I couldn’t help but laugh. There before our very eyes was the depiction of a meme come to life. In the dining room of la Sirenita was a papier Mâché reproduction of the bottom half of a mermaid. It reminded us of a meme we recently shared.  That meme depicted a grizzled sailor marooned on a desert island.  On the first panel of the meme the sailor smiled lasciviously as a beautiful and buxom mermaid approached the island.  The second panel shows the sailor cooking the bottom half of the mermaid on a rotisserie.  Yeah, it’s gruesome, but come on, it’s funny, too. The bottom half of a mermaid wasn’t the only unique art on La Sirenita’s walls.  One framed painting depicted a rather disfigured Marilyn Monroe.  Another portrayed a black woman in the throes of a foodgasm.  More conspicuous than the artwork was the absence of other diners.  While the bar was packed, the only other diners in the capacious dining room were two eight-year old brothers, one of whom innocently asked if The Dude was a poodle.  Though our debonair dachshund was insulted (rightfully so), he has too much class…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBetter Call SaulBreakfastDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: Excellent

Java Joe’s – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:17 PM

“I hate chile powder.” ~Tuco Salamanca Breaking Bad, Season 2 Duty-bound to make himself available to the citizenry of the fledgling United States, newly elected president George Washington spent the night in so many private homes and inns that “George Washington Slept Here” remains a real estate cliché and tourist draw centuries later. Perhaps the closest similarly celebrated landmarks in the Albuquerque metropolitan area are the filming sites for the 16-time Emmy Award-winning television series Breaking Bad. Never mind that Albuquerque recently celebrated its Tercentennial–three hundred years of history. History is not what visitors want to see. They want to see the Duke City of Breaking Bad. Albuquerque, which itself became a character in Breaking Bad, is the home of Walter White, the down-and-out chemistry teacher who metamorphosed into “Heisenberg,” the city’s meth kingpin. Five years after the series ended, pilgrimages to every Breaking Bad filming location remain a popular draw. During my inaugural visit to Downtown Java Joe’s, a number of tourists, not all of them millennials, were snapping selfies in front of the east wall where a towering graffiti-inspired tribute to city life dominates. One of them exclaimed “this used to be Tuco’s lair.” Another chimed in, “yeah,…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBreakfastBrunchDog FriendlyNew Mexico

Sunnyside Up Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side Keep on the sunny side of life It will help us ev’ry day, it will brighten all the way If we’ll keep on the sunny side of life.” ~Keep On The Sunny Side Lyrics According to Statistica, a leading provider of market and consumer data, in 2019 the per capita consumption of eggs in the United States was 207.1 eggs.  That’s up from 177.7 eggs per consumer in the year 2000.  In a 2019 survey conducted by YouGov, an international research data and analytics group, respondents indicated their most preferred way to consume eggs for breakfast is scrambled eggs (36%).  Other choices were eggs over easy (18%), sunny side up (12%), eggs over medium (11%) and hard-boiled eggs (6%). In 2021, Zippia, a resource for job-seekers, used Google Trends, to determine what egg preparation each state eats a disproportionate amount of (ostensibly the most popular way to eat eggs).  Google Trends showed that as the favorite egg dish in 18 states, scrambled eggs are the most popular way to eat eggs by far.  Sunny side up is second most popular among 14 states.  New Mexico was one of seven states…

AmericanBreakfastBrunchDiners Drive-Ins and DivesDog FriendlyRating: N/R (Not Rated)United StatesWyoming

Cafe Genevieve – Jackson, Wyoming

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

My friend and former Intel colleague Steve Caine will forever rue the day he asked me to help him with an expense report for a business trip he made to Portland, Oregon. His itemized expense report indicated he had dined twice at Chevy’s, a middling quality Americanized Mexican restaurant which wouldn’t survive in the tough Albuquerque market. I teased him mercilessly. Worse, when my boss saw what the commotion was all about, he immediately put Steve on double-secret probation. Steve has never lived down visiting a Chevy’s in Portland where he could have had some of the country’s freshest and best seafood. When the din died down, Steve admitted somewhat sheepishly that after two days in Portland, he was missing New Mexican food so desperately that he visited the closed facsimile he could find. It was either Chevy’s or a restaurant named Machissimo Mouse (seriously). In truth, I’ve been there, too…well, not to Chevy’s and definitely not to Machissimo Mouse, but at a point in my business travels where the craving for New Mexico’s inimitable cuisine strikes like an addict’s need for a fix. My Kim and I had been away from New Mexico for eleven days during our June,…

AmericanBreakfastDog FriendlyIdahoRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

Bigwood Bread Cafe – Ketchum, Idaho

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Ernest Hemingway spent much of the roaring twenties in Paris, a city whose own liberal attitudes attracted poets, painters and writers from throughout the world. Paris was a vibrant city which drew many expats from the so-called “lost generation” of cynical young people disillusioned with the materialism and individualism prevalent in society at the time.  As a young writer penning “A Moveable Feast,” Hemingway observed: “You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris,” because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food.” An avid outdoorsman, Ernest Hemingway, was a Sun Valley habitué even before establishing a permanent residence in Ketchum two years before his death in 1961.  One of Hemingway’s favorite watering holes was The Sawtooth Club, a decidedly masculine appointed establishment where he would have been right at home.  While enjoying breakfast at Bigwood Bread about a mile north of The Sawtooth Club, I wondered to myself if Hemingway would have enjoyed that bread.  Surely after having experienced Paris and its incomparable boulangeries, he would have become addicted to bread.   Alas, Bigwood Bread, the…

AmericanCoffeeDog FriendlyFarm to TableIdahoRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

Yellow Brick Cafe – Twin Falls, Idaho

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In the Air Force, when you’re stationed at a base overseas, service members receive an orientation on how to comport ourselves (behave) in that country.  We’re cautioned about cultural do’s and don’ts.  We’re introduced to American terminology and conduct our host country members might find offensive.  Above all, it’s emphasized that we are ambassadors for the United States, that our behavior reflects on our country.  We’re admonished not to perpetrate the “ugly American” stereotype that some countries have about the fruited plain.  If you’re not familiar with the term, here’s how Wikipedia defines it: “Ugly American” is a stereotype depicting American citizens as exhibiting loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior mainly abroad, but also at home. When my Kim and I travel under spacious skies, we see ourselves as ambassadors for the great state of New Mexico.  We’re kind to wait staff and other diners at every restaurant we frequent.  We engage “local indigenous personnel” (a term from MASH) in friendly conversation and express genuine interest when we ask questions about them, their restaurants and their cities.  Invariably not only do we get great service, but they reciprocate our interest.  Lately, however, it’s become more difficult to act…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBreakfastNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Milly’s Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:28 AM

Until rather recently, if there was a wide diversity of opinion about Albuquerque’s restaurant scene, it wasn’t widely shared. Albuquerque’s two daily periodicals, the Albuquerque Journal and the Albuquerque Tribune as well as a number of alternative publications published weekly restaurant reviews, but opinions and observations expressed therein were rather one-sided. It wasn’t until about 2008 that crowd-sourced restaurant reviews really took off in the Duke City. Published in such online mediums as TripAdvisor (founded in 2000), Yelp (launched in 2004) and Urbanspoon (debuted in 2006), crowd-sourced review venues gave everyone an opportunity to become a “critic.” More than ever before “Joe and Jane Diner” had license to express rather colorful (sometimes bordering on libel) versions of their truth. One of the predictable outcomes of this open, honest and direct culture became the wide swath of differing opinions. This illustrated how different people can have distinctly different perceptions—each a snapshot of time–of their experience at a restaurant. Reviews for some restaurants run the gamut with some reviewers extolling every aspect of their visit as “fabulous” while others lambaste every facet of their experience. It’s almost as if two different restaurants are being reviewed. The differences are sometimes so very pronounced…

AlbuquerqueBreakfastDog FriendlyMexicanNew MexicoTacos

Los Olivos – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

For many New Mexicans, Durango, Colorado is much more familiar than Durango, Mexico.  In truth, however, Mexico’s Durango may actually have more historical significance and ties to the Land of Enchantment than its like-named resort town in Colorado.  That’s especially true for the Catholic Churches of New Mexico. Episcopal jurisdiction for the Catholic church in New Mexico was placed in 1797 under the stewardship of the Bishop of Durango. New Mexico remained part of the Diocese of Durango until 1850 when Pope Pius IX created the Vicariate Apostolic of New Mexico and appointed Father Jean Baptiste Lamy as its first Bishop.  Yes, that’s the same Father Jean Baptiste Lamy on whom Wila Cather’s Death Comes For the Archbishop is based. Durango, Mexico was also a significant “paraje” (stopping point) along the The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (Royal Road of the Interior Land), the 1,590 mile road between Mexico City and San Juan Pueblo (Ohkay Owingeh), New Mexico. During the 17th Century, the area between the villas of Durango and Santa Fe also came to be known as “the Chihuahua Trail.”   It’s a vast understatement to declare that Santa Fe’s reliance on El Camino Real was crucial to the…