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Friends of Gil (FOG) Dinner: World Peace One Meal at a Time

Gil Garduno7:28 PM

You’ve probably espied a bumper sticker encouraging everyone to “Visualize Whirled Peas,” an obvious homophone for “Visualize World Peace.” Some have posited that whirled peas might indeed be the way to world peace. Seriously! I’m speaking, of course, about hummus, a ubiquitous Middle Eastern food typically made of mashed (whirled) chickpeas. There’s a tiny café in Israel employing a unique way to promote reconciliation. The restaurant offers a 50-percent discount to any table in which Arabs and Jews elect to sit together. That’s promoting peace through hummus. Negotiating world peace over dinner isn’t exactly a novel concept. A New York…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyItalianNew MexicoPizzaRating: Excellent

Piatanzi – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:40 AM

“Italy is an illusion, indeed, a mirage, the stuff of wishes.” ~Mario Luzi In the 1996 motion picture Big Night, two Italian restaurants across the street from one another operate in diametric opposition to one another both philosophically and in practice. One is enormously successful because it gives customers what they want and expect (even though savvy diners would consider the culinary fare mediocre and uninspired). In the other restaurant, the chef is a perfectionist who will labor all day to create a perfect dish and becomes exasperated when diners don’t recognize the authentic culinary art he creates, preferring “Americanized”…

AlbuquerqueNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Cervantes Restaurant & Lounge – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:35 PM

In 1706, a group of Spanish colonists were granted permission by King Philip of Spain to establish a new villa on the banks and in the valley of the Rio del Norte. The colonists chose a spot “in a place of good fields, waters, pastures, and timber, distant from the villa of Santa Fe about twenty-two leagues.” They named the new settlement La Villa de Alburquerque in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain, Fernandez de la Cueva, Duque de Alburquerque.” A portrait of el Duque de Alburquerque hangs prominently just above the mantle at Cervantes Restaurant & Lounge in…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2017Food Network Eats New MexicoGone But Not ForgottenLatin AmericanNew MexicoRating: OutstandingRestaurant Impossible

Pasion Latin Fusion – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:19 PM

“In my experience, food and passion always intertwine. Passion is food for the soul’s mood at any particular time.” Tammy Mollai Robert Irvine, host of the Food Network’s Restaurant: Impossible show has some nerve! In an episode which first aired in March, 2014, the tough-talking British mesomorph had the audacity to tell America that Pasion Latin Fusion wasn’t the beautiful, graceful swan with which many of us had fallen in love. Although he didn’t directly call Pasion an ugly duckling paddling about aimlessly, Irvine certainly intimated that things at Pasion weren’t as rosy as some of us may have thought.…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyNew MexicanNew MexicoNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Good

Sadie’s Dining Room – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno4:02 AM

Albuquerque and Sadie’s Dining Room have come a long way since 1950. Back then the Duke City’s population was 96,815, up 173% from 1940. Sadie Koury, the oldest child of Lebanese immigrants, was four years away from launching her first Albuquerque restaurant. Located on Second and Osuna, the first Sadie’s was housed in a Lilliputian edifice not much bigger than the restrooms at the Fourth Street restaurant which today bears her name. The Duke City was much more pastoral in the early 50s and Sadie’s restaurant was but a diminutive nine-stool diner on what was then one of the city’s…

AlbuquerqueFrenchNew MexicoRating: Excellent

Le Troquet Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:29 PM

Pope Gregory the Great was a prolific writer canonized as a saint and recognized as a “doctor of the church.” Among musicians, singers, students and teachers, he is revered as a patron saint, a heavenly advocate who intercedes on their behalf. Among gluttons of the Middle Ages, however, the supreme pontiff was reviled. In his treatise Morals on the Book of Job, Pope Gregory essentially condemned them to Hell, a denouncement reflecting the strict austerity of the times. For gluttons, the unpardonable sin was in deriving too much pleasure from eating. Eating, or more precisely the pleasurable overindulgence in food,…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBar & GrillClosed in 2019Gone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico

Bosque Brewing Company – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:38 PM

NOTE: The Bosque Brewing Company has six locations including two in Las Cruces and one in Bernalillo.  Only the location in San Mateo reviewed here has closed. In 1978, the number of breweries across the fruited plain had fallen to an all-time, post-Prohibition low of 89. That year President Jimmy Carter signed into law, a bill that legalized home brewing on a national level. Since the craft brewing market began to pick up steam in the mid- to late-1980s there has been no surcease in sight. Today, there are more than 2,500 breweries operating across the United States with another…

AlbuquerqueRating: GoodSandwich

DG’s Deli – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:23 PM

“There are sandwich shops in New York which offer the nobility and gentry a choice of no less than 100 different sandwiches, all of them alluring and some of them downright masterpieces.” H.L. Mencken In conversations with trusted gastronomes about what the Albuquerque area dining scene is most direly lacking, it’s not Basque cuisine, Russian food, Low-Country cooking or the food of any other race or ethnicity that’s most often mentioned. Surprisingly, what my esteemed colleagues believe is most desperately needed in the Duke City is a big city deli–and not just any kind of deli. My colleagues lament the…

BakeryBrunchFrenchNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Santa Fe

Chez Mamou – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno5:00 PM

When she asked me to repeat the name of the French restaurant where we were dining one slightly breezy Sunday morning, I knew my clever bride had something in mind. Relaying that we were dining at Chez (pronounced “shay”) Mamou, she retorted “are you sure it’s not called “Shame on you.” That was her reaction to a server having deposited a stale, probably older than day-old baguette on our table. She followed up with “no self-respecting French restaurant, especially one claiming to be a bakery would serve bread baked by Napoleon’s baker.” Whether or not the fossilized (her term) bread…

Announcements

Friends of Gil (FOG) IX: Where do YOU want to Eat? Cast Your Vote Now!

Gil Garduno8:34 PM

OK FOGEYS. It’s voting time. By Jim Millington We have prepared a list of widely disparate restaurants as worthy candidates for FOG IX in July. In an exercise of Democracy not controlled by special interest groups, you have the opportunity to vote for the restaurant in which you’d like to dine with the Friends of Gil. This being New Mexico, we ask that farm animals and dead relatives not vote. 1. Piatanzi on Juan Tabo has a back room for groups. The food is unique in Albuquerque and wonderful if you like it and not wonderful if you don’t. A…

AlbuquerqueBurgersNew MexicoNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Very Good

Laguna Burger (66 Pit Stop) – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno8:31 AM

In 2016 and 2017 my review of the Laguna Burger was the most frequently visited post on Gil’s Thrilling…  In 2015 and 2014, only one restaurant (Down N’ Dirty Seafood Boil) received more blog visits than Laguna Burger.  If even a small number of the visitors to the review actually also visited the restaurant, that’s thousands of visitors to Laguna Burger.  It’s probably safe to assume hundreds of thousands of visitors who haven’t read Gil’s Thrilling review have made their way to one of the four Laguna Burger locations, three of which are definitely off-the-beaten path.  In November, 2017, Laguna…