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2024 James Beard Foundation "Best New Restaurant" SemifinalistAsianFusionJames Beard Foundation (JBF) Award Nominees & WinnersNew MexicoRating: ExceptionalSanta Fe

ALKEME AT OPEN KITCHEN – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” ~Khalil Gibran, The Prophet Very few of us can identify with the profundity of Khalil Gibran’s immortal poem “On Joy and Sorrow”  as well as Hue-Chan Karels, owner of the Santa Fe restaurant that is reimagining Asian cuisine.   Outwardly the beautiful entrepreneur is as buoyant and joyful as can be.  In fact, what might be her restaurant’s “mission statement” reflects that joy:   “We are joy makers who believe in the magic of culinary experiences.  Our passion is to create and curate inspired, original, unforgettable gatherings for the joyful celebration of human connection wherever they can be imagined.”  Before she became a joy maker, however, she had to surmount deep sorrows that carved into her being. Hue-Chan was nine years old when she and her family fled Vietnam.  Carrying only a small shoulder bag with $500, personal documents and negatives of family photos, the displaced family was sent to Guam then Camp Pendleton, California before relocating to Michigan. From a child’s perspective, the family’s…

AlbuquerqueBuffetIndianNew MexicoRating: Excellent

Kabab & Curry – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

A recent study by The Picky Eater analyzed the world’s most popular cuisines and dishes.  Picky Eater’s survey determined that Italian cuisine (highlighted by pizza, pasta, and risotto) is the most popular cuisine in the world, followed by Japanese and Indian food. The study also revealed that Chinese restaurants are the most common worldwide, representing an average of 9.5% of all restaurants in “top-visited cities,” followed by Italian cuisine concepts (roughly 8.5%) and Indian establishments (8%).  Indian restaurants have not propogated as widely in the United States. A 2023 study by the Pew Research Center closely indicates that Indian restaurants account for only 7 percent of all restaurants serving Asian food in America.  That’s starting to change. Although the first Indian restaurant ( the Hindustanee Coffee House in New York City) opened its doors in the late 1800s, it wasn’t  until the 1960s and 1970s that Indian cuisine began to gain wider recognition, as more Indian immigrants came to the United States and opened restaurants and grocery stores. Today, Indian cuisine is a well-established part of the American culinary culture–one that is poised to explode largely thanks to innovative second- and third-generation Indian-American chefs developing new dishes and unique concepts.…

FrenchNew MexicoRating: OutstandingSanta Fe

CLAFOUTIS – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:48 PM

According to the Oxford Dictionaries, you only need to know 10 words to understand 25-percent of what native [English] speakers say and write. You need to know 100 words to understand 50-percent of what native speakers say and write, and 1000 words to understand 75-percent of all the words used in common, everyday English. To understand 95-percent of the text used in blogs (even this one) and newspapers, you need a vocabulary of only 3,000 words. Considering the Oxford English Dictionary lists more than 171,000 words in current use (and another 47,000 obsolete words), knowing 3,000 words doesn’t sound very impressive. Many years ago before my first trip to France, I took an inventory of how many French words I knew, arriving at somewhere near that magical number of 3,000. While knowing that many words in English would make me fairly conversant, knowing 3,000 words in French (from a language boasting of 100,000 words) certainly didn’t endow me with conversational fluency. Not even close! French orthography, the spelling and punctuation of the French language, comes easy for me compared to pronunciation. If you’ve ever seen the episode of Friends in which Joey Tribbiani attempted to speak French, you’ll know of…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBrunchDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)

Rio Grande Social – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

When Lisa Wong, my friend and former colleague at Intel,  first cast her eyes on the Rio Grande, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.  For years, she has captained dragon boat racing teams as they paddle the mighty Willamette River which is 40 feet deep and varies in width from 600 to 1,900 feet.  Though some 1,700 miles shorter than the Rio Grande, the 187-mile long Willamette dwarfs the Rio Grande.  There’s no way a dragon boat (forty feet long with seating for twenty paddlers) race could take place on the murky Rio Grande.  Never mind that in the 1990s one of Albuquerque’s most highly regarded restaurant was called the Rio Grande Yacht Club.  Our pathetically water-poor Rio Grande isn’t deep enough to accommodate much more than a canoe. The Rio Grande, which trickles…er, meanders some 1,890 miles from Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico, is the Rodney Dangerfield among the world’s great rivers. Will Rogers once described it as “the only river I know of that is in need of irrigating,” a prescient observation considering how over-allocated and over-appropriated this fabled river has become.  Though it is considered the 5th longest river in North America and the 20th…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBreakfastBreakfast BurritosBrunchCorralesRating: Very Good

Hannah & Nate’s – Albuquerque & Corrales, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:46 AM

There are just some restaurants at which the stereotypical Ralph Cramden hungry man shouldn’t dine. Hannah & Nate’s might be one of them. It’s not that the food isn’t good. That’s certainly not the case. The troglodytic nature of men is such that we whine and complain when we have to wait more than two minutes for our meals and we become doubly obnoxious when the portions aren’t large enough to feed a small bull elephant. Thankfully, my Kim has been a great civilizing influence on me and I’m able to enjoy restaurants such as Hannah & Nate’s as much as she does. 17 May 2019: Hannah & Nate’s is a home decor and market cafe ideally suited for gentrified ladies with a lot of leisure time on their hands. It’s not a restaurant at which a boorish lout will sit patiently then be satisfied with what he would consider “finger foods.” Take for example the “beef & bleu” sandwich featuring sliced roast beef, caramelized onion and sautéed mushrooms topped with bleu cheese on grilled sourdough. It’s not four inches thick the way such men would want it and the bleu cheese isn’t powerful enough to give us the belch…

AlbuquerqueBurgersNew MexicanRating: Very Good

Kathy’s – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno1:34 AM

In 2001, the Alibi staff declared Kathy’s Carry-Out the “best hamburger in the Duke City.” Surely,” nay-sayers retorted, “this had to be a mistake.” How, after all, they reasoned, could a ramshackle garage sized building with a kitschy purple facade and garish orange trim possibly compete with the flamboyant chains and their glitz and glamor or even with the anointed local purveyors in the more well-beaten, well-eaten paths throughout the city? Kathy’s Carry-Out lived up to its name, emphasis on the “carry-out” portion of its name. Carry-Out was the only option available for the phalanx of diners eager to bite into those bodacious burgers. Ensconced in an Isleta Boulevard neighborhood seemingly zoned as much for more residential than commercial purposes, Kathy’s Carry-Out certainly wouldn’t win any awards for esthetics and it probably violated every feng shui principle for harmony, not that hungry diners noticed. Savvy burger aficionados from the South Valley frequented Kathy’s for its wonderful New Mexican cuisine and a burger so good it’d convert staunch vegans. It took one visit to convince my Kim and I you can’t judge a burger by the dilapidated facade of its place of origin. Kathy’s does serve one of, if not THE…

AlbuquerqueNew MexicoRating: ExcellentSandwich

Cheese & Coffee (Uptown) – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Imagine canoodling in a hot tub with your sweetheart while enjoying a brilliant symphony of light courtesy of the aurora borealis as you both sip on hot coffee in which reindeer cheese bobs luxuriously.  It’s likely you find that romantic scenario very appealing save perhaps for seeing reindeer cheese floating atop your hot coffee.  While that scenario may sound unreal…maybe even surreal to most of us, it’s a reality in Finland where cheese is a favorite addition to a type of coffee called kaffeost.  Not just any cheese can make the cut, however. Finnish folks only use a particular type of cheese called leipäjuusto which translates loosely to “bread cheese.”  Despite that translation, “bread cheese” is one-hundred percent cheese.  There’s absolutely no bread in it.  The sobriquet “bread cheese” comes from the cheese’s absorbent qualities.  This cheese soaks up the coffee. You don’t need to be a barista to make kaffeost.  It’s as simple as adding the cheese to your coffee and letting it soak for a few minutes before fishing it out and  eating it separately.  First-timers and aficionados praise the flavor of the cheese which inherits the roasted flavors of the coffee.  The softened chunks also warrant high…

BarbecueNew MexicoRating: ExcellentSanta Fe

The Ranch House – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:27 PM

When it comes to existentialism, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have nothing on my university classmate Ron at the University of Southerm Mississippi who would argue that the meaning of life is to ponder the meaning of life. In his ongoing analysis of existence, he can turn any subject into a philosophical debate. Once while enjoying a rack of ribs at Anjac’s BBQ in Gulfport, Mississippi, he actually pondered the essence of barbecue–to sauce or not to sauce, what is lamb’s place in barbecue, etc. While he pondered, I ate. It appears my friend is not the only person who has contemplated the essence of barbecue. Meathead Goldwyn, the self-professed “barbecue whisperer and hedonism evangelist” believes “the seductive aroma and flavor of smoke is the essence of barbecue.” Author Rick Browne who has a “PhB” in barbecue argues that the essence of barbecue is the sauce, “the glorious thickened liquid (sometimes not-so-thickened) that we gleefully baste, mop and slop with.” William McKinney who co-authored Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue counters: “Sauce is fine and can perk up the meat, but the essence of barbecue lies in that process.” Los Angeles Times writer Charles Perry weighs in with “the…

AlbuquerqueJapaneseNew MexicoRating: GoodSushi

Sushi Gen – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:56 AM

Years ago while at Intel I co-managed an enterprise project with Nora, a diminutive Vietnamese lady who later left the company and moved to San Diego.  I expected her to say she her move was prompted by a desire to be closer to family or to her childhod home.  Instead what she most looked forward  to about relocating to San Diego was the availability of all-you-can-eat (AYCE) sushi bars.  Her answer validated why she and I worked so well.  We had a very symbiotic relationship and were able to land our project not only successfully, but better than any other Intel site had done.  We both loved Asian food of all types. Nora left Albuquerque a couple of years before the Duke City saw the launch of its first AYCE sushi restaurant.  In 2024, Sushi Gen celebrates twenty years of creating and serving sushi.  Its $29.99 per person price point isn’t significantly more than it was in 2004.  When Nora first told me about AYCE sushi restaurants, I was skeptical. “How good can AYCE sushi be?” I opined.  We found out during a 2001 visit to Makino in Las Vegas, Nevada that AYCE sushi can be pretty good indeed, especially…

Food TruckMexicanNew MexicoRating: GoodTacos

Birrieria Y Tacos Alex Tijuana Style – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:01 PM

If you’ve noticed an increase in the number of recent visits on this blog to Mexican restaurants, credit much of that to Pati Jinich, ebullient host of the James Beard Award-winning and Emmy nominated PBS series Pati’s Mexican Table   Although we record the Saturday airing of Pati’s Mexican Table, we don’t usually watch it until Sunday…right before lunchtime.  It’s no wonder, therefore, that what we’ve been craving for lunch is Mexican food. It’s nigh impossible not to be utterly charmed (if not outright besotted) by the lovely Pati Jinich.   Her huge likeability quotient is the byproduct of a genuine warmth and self-effacing humor which come across with her every thickly-accented utterance.  She’s down-to-Earth and genuine, taking absolute joy in  broadening and sharing her expansive knowledge about the colorful tapestry known as Mexican cuisine.  In every episode, Pati embarks on an educational and entertaining journey.  Each dish she encounters serves as a launching point into explorations of the rich and diverse history and culture of her country of birth. In season eight (episode 811), which aired in January, 2019, Pati explored Sinaloa, “Mexico’s Bread Basket,” which produces about 40% of the meat and produce consumed in all of Mexico.  Inspired…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyNew MexicoPizzaRating: N/R (Not Rated)

Gimani: A Slice Bar – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“You better cut the pizza in four pieces. I’m not hungry enough to eat six.” ~Yogi Berra In New York City, pizza by the slice is as ubiquitous as towering skyscrapers. Many of the city’s nearly 2,000 pizzerias serve pizza by the slice. Most have been doing so since the end of World War II when recently returned American veterans who had served in Italy craved the sliced pizza they had enjoyed during their service. Heck, in the Big Apple, you can even find pizza by the slice proffered by sidewalk vendors. According to my friend, the late, great Italian chef Mario D’Elia of Poppy’s Pizza & Italian Eatery, pizza is a street food.  “That’s so you can eat it while you walk,” he explained. At about three bucks a slice, it’s usually pretty decent thin-sliced pizza blanketed with cheese. The ubiquity of pizza by the slice doesn’t mean the practice is universally approved of. The other school of thought snubs its nose at the thought of serving by the slice, the triangle-shaped, tomato sauced pie Americans consume at the rate of 100 acres a day. Many traditionalists, particularly artisan pizzaiolis with coal-burning oven pedigrees disdain the practice of pizza…