JOE’S PASTA HOUSE – Rio Rancho, New Mexico
Once a year, despite my protestations and whining, I agree to take my Kim to the Olive Garden. It’s a deal we have, albeit one that makes me feel like Faust in the Christopher Marlowe …
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Saigon City – Albuquerque, New Mexico
My brother in blogging Ryan Cook describes his first day in Vietnam: “So, my first stop in Vietnam was the capital, Hanoi. My honest first impressions… what the hell have I let myself in for. …
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Street Food Sensations – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Restaurant Insider, which touts itself as “your source for restaurant news, trends, information, tools and conversation” has observed that one of the catalysts most instrumental in driving a changing culinary landscape are Generation Z (anyone …
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Wing It Up – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern has nothing on my friend Ralph Guariglio. Zimmern who claims to love such “exotic cuisine” as fermented walrus anus probably wouldn’t touch some of the…er, interesting foods Ralph enjoyed during …
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Taco Cabana – Albuquerque, New Mexico
In 1972, English author Diana Kennedy, the doyenne of Mexican cuisine, penned The Cuisines of Mexico, a Mexican cookbook in which she described Texas’s Mexican food as “inauthentic,” coining the term “Tex-Mex.” Kennedy essentially drew …
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Duke City Taco – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Observer: You’ve said that you can do anything with a taco, except put ketchup on it? Danny Trejo: That’s it! [Laughs]. Observer: Do people try to do that? Danny Trejo: Yeah, some people think that …
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Sharky’s Fish and Shrimp – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Never mind your tired, your poor or even your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Carlos Zazveta, the effusive proprietor of Sharky’s Fish & Seafood told us to bring our dogs, our cows and our …
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Rev’s BBQ – Albuquerque, New Mexico
You might think that the food truck industry is an ultra-competitive dog-eat-dog business in which purveyors aren’t very gracious when discussing fellow food truck operators. Considering how they often jockey for a limited number of …
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Mighty Mike’s Meats – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Thank you, Mighty Mike! Thank you for restoring our faith in barbecue just one day after my Kim declared “I don’t want to have barbecue for a long time.” Readers might find it hard to …
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Cafe Lush – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Urban Dictionary, that oft hilarious, veritable cornucopia of slang, jargon and streetwise lingo, defines “lush” as “someone who drinks a lot.” (Actually, there are several pages of similar definitions for “lush” in the “peoples’ dictionary,” …
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Master Food Truck – Santa Fe, New Mexico
Drive eastward on Airport Road in Santa Fe toward Cerrillos and you just might wonder if you accidentally traipsed into the Twilight Zone and somehow found yourself in Los Angeles. At the very least, you …
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C3’s Bistro – Corrales, New Mexico
A case could be made that “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” the name of a 1977 hit by Santa Esmeralda, could well be a lament about New Mexican cuisine (in addition to being the background …
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Elotes Del Rancho – Rio Rancho, New Mexico
“Now you’re just being uppity.” That’s my Kim putting me in my place the second I begin to crow haughtily about some highbrow or nouveau way to prepare something ordinary. Tandoori salmon pizza…that’s so me. …
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La Guelaguetza – Albuquerque, New Mexico
“I am tenacious. And I love to eat. I go into the field and see some delectable things they’re cooking, wild plants perhaps, and think, ‘Oh my God, I have to write about this.’ I …
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Tikka Spice Food Truck – Albuquerque, New Mexico
“Fly once more like you did before, Sing a new song chicken tikka!” ~Chiquitita Misheard Lyrics You might think by virtue of my name and then gangling gait, school mates at St. Anthony’s in Penasco …
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Federico’s Mexican Food – Rio Rancho, New Mexico
in February, 2020, Chef’s Pencil crunched the numbers of Google searches for ethnic cuisines to determine the most popular ethnic cuisines in America. The two most popular ethnic cuisines were deemed to be Mexican and …
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FORGHEDABOUDIT SOUTHWEST ITALIAN – Las Cruces, New Mexico
Genius, it’s oft been said, is ninety-nine-percent perspiration and one-percent inspiration. Apply that equation to Bob Yacone and you’d be selling him far short. So would the cliche “giving one-hundred-percent.” Add a few more hundred …
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Arrey Cafe – Arrey, New Mexico
About halfway between Truth or Consequences and Hatch on I-25, you may have espied a billboard audaciously proclaiming “world’s finest green chile cheeseburger.” That billboard has always piqued my curiosity and prompted such questions as …
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Noodle Works – Albuquerque, New Mexico
“To witness the birth of a noodle is a glorious thing. I have listened, spellbound, as an 85-year-old noodle chef in Beijing told me why the act of making noodles helped him make sense of …
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Storming Crab – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Archaeologists believe there’s a scientific explanation for contemporary humankind’s predilection for seaside vacations and trips to the beach. Evidence–stone tools used to cut through animal flesh–seems to support the theory that the first humans migrated …
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Cazuela’s Mexican Grill – Rio Rancho, New Mexico
Here’s an interesting bit of Jeopardy level trivia which you might contemplate the next time you dine at this Rio Rancho spot: In the Spanish golden age, a “cazuela” was the gallery located above the …
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Whoo’s Donuts – Santa Fe, New Mexico
When my corporate group had its employees, a high-performing contingent of information technology professionals, take a strengths assessment, the results were contrary to the stereotypes often painted about techno-geeks. None of us, for example, were …
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Birrieria Y Tacos Alex Tijuana Style – Albuquerque, New Mexico
If you’ve noticed an almost inordinate 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 …
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URBAN COCINA – Albuquerque, New Mexico
if you believe the idea for delivery food started with Domino’s Pizza and its promise of 30-minute delivery or free, you’d be sadly mistaken. Nor did take-out originate with Chinese restaurants in California and their …
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Changos – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Darn that Google! Even though I used very specific Boolean operands to target my search for “Changos” in “Albuquerque,” Google returned results for Changos in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. It wasn’t until studying the photos for …
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Stuffed Lust Sopaipilla Company – Bernalillo, New Mexico
“Of the seven deadly sins, lust is definitely the pick of the litter.” ~Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All “Why,” my Kim wondered aloud “would a food truck call itself Sopaipilla Lust.” Obviously reflecting on …
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Bosque North Brewery & Taproom – Bernalillo, New Mexico
“Are you going to explain how to pronounce “bosque?,” my Kim asked when she espied me working on this review. Though her Spanish vocabulary is rather limited, she pronounces the five or six hundred Spanish …
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Oni Noodles – Albuquerque, New Mexico
In retrospect, the monsters and bogeymen who frightened impressionable children of my generation were pretty lame. Perhaps the most lame of them all was Frankenstein, a lumbering behemoth who walked around with his arms outstretched …
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O’Hare’s Grille & Pub – Rio Rancho, New Mexico
Céad míle fáilte, an Irish greeting meaning “a hundred thousand welcomes” preempts any menu listings at O’Hare’s Grille & Pub. At times, especially during happy hour and before Covid, it seemed a hundred thousand patrons …
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Cocoa Flora – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)
In a 1995 episode of Seinfeld fittingly titled “The Switch” Jerry asked his devious friend George Costanza how he could switch from dating Sandy, a dour woman who didn’t laugh to dating her roommate Laura, …
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T & T Gas N Mart – Albuquerque, New Mexico
“Eat here and get gas.” Even in more naive and innocent times, the connotation of that double-entendre wasn’t lost on adults or children, all of whom giggled when they espied the classic sign on the …
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Kimo’s Hawaiian BBQ – Albuquerque, New Mexico
For over a quarter century, the most popular section in New Mexico Magazine (the nation’s oldest state magazine, by the way) has been a humorous column entitled “One of Our Fifty is Missing.” The column …
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Guaca Guaca Tacos & Beer – Albuquerque, New Mexico
What culinary voluptuaries consider exotic and delicious, timorous eaters might find distasteful and even nauseating. With M.F.K Fisher as their muse, culinary voluptuaries–the truly adventurous diners among us–don’t let themselves be drawn into a vortex …
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Bar & Grill / Dog Friendly / New Mexico / New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009 / Pizza / Rio Rancho
Turtle Mountain Brewing Company – Rio Rancho, New Mexico
The Tewa name “Oku Pin” which translates in English to “Turtle Mountain” has three meanings of significance to the people of Okay Owingeh, one of New Mexico’s great Tewa speaking Northern New Mexico Pueblos. “Oku …
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Vintage 423 – Albuquerque, New Mexico
My friend Bill Resnik, a professional stand-up comedian for more than two decades, performs a bit in which he “translates” Spanish terms for linguistically challenged audiences. “Paseo del Norte,” for example, translates to “Paseo of …
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Curry Leaf – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Leonard: Is it racist that I took you to an Indian restaurant? Priya: It’s okay, I like Indian food. Leonard: Or as you probably call it back home, food. ~Big Bang Theory (Season Four, Episode …
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