Category: Santa Fe

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Rowley Farmhouse Ales – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Only in John Denver’s hit song “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” is life on the farm “kinda laid back.” In actuality, farm life can be downright arduous, requiring back-breaking work in climatic extremes for low wages. It was much worse in colonial days when life on a farm generally meant very few luxuries outside of a warm fire and a tankard (or ten) of house-brewed ale. Beer was brewed not only to refresh, sustain and comfort hard-working farmers, but because during sanitation-deprived colonial times, it was safer than water. Farm-brewed beer was created with what was on hand, whether it be wheat, hops, barley or rye supplemented with such ingredients as evergreen boughs, juniper berries, honey and fruit. Because…

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Los Potrillos – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Faced with a situation that renders us incredulous, many of us might yammer incoherently, complain vociferously or maybe even utter colorful epithets. Such moments, it seems, are best expressed with succinct precision, a rare skill mastered by a select few wordsmiths from which eloquence flows regardless of situation–polymaths such as the late Anthony Bourdain, a best-selling author, world traveler, renowned chef and “poet of the common man.” Flummoxed at the discovery of a Chili’s restaurant a mere five miles from the Mexican border, I might have ranted and raved about another inferior chain restaurant and its parody of Mexican food. With nary a hint of contempt, Bourdain instead compared the spread of Chili’s restaurants across America to herpes. How utterly…

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Master Food Truck – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

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 might find yourself declaring “I knew I should have made that left turn in Albuquerque.”   “What is this madness,” you ask.   As we found out, on weekends Airport Road is home to a veritable cavalcade of taco trucks, the overarching term for food trucks of all types in Los Angeles.  Prowling the mean streets of the City of Angels are more than 3,000 licensed taco trucks and carts.  Street food has become a billion-dollar industry in L.A. According to Yelp, there are only 42…

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Whoo’s Donuts – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

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 profiled as Megadeath tee-shirt-wearing introverts who live in our mother’s basement and play World of Warcraft online against disembodied “friends.” Most of us were correctly pegged as being high achievers with healthy interpersonal skills and altruistic inclinations. The employee who defied the IT stereotype most was my friend and fellow Peñasquero Antonette whom the assessment categorized as a “Woo” for her naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior. Even though Antonette was a cheerleader in high school, Woo in this case, is not a…

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The Cowgirl BBQ – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

Cowgirl” is an attitude really. A pioneer spirit, a special American brand of courage. The cowgirl faces life head-on, lives by her own lights, and makes no excuses. Cowgirls take stands; they speak up. They defend things they hold dear. ~Dale Evans In a 1980s commercial for Pace Picante sauce, several hungry cowboys threatened to string up the cook for brandishing a foreign-made (translation: not made in Texas) salsa.  “Why, this here salsa is made in New York City!”  “New York City?  Gil a rope!” With such a xenophobic attitude about New York City, you would think those cowboys would have raised a ruckus when a restaurant named the Cowgirl Hall of Fame launched in New York City.  “New York…

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La Choza Restaurant – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh Using bold and furious brushstrokes and striking colors (mostly red and green), Van Gogh once created a painting intended to depict humanity at its lowest point. Calling it “Night Cafe” he described it as “…one of the ugliest I have ever done, a collection of clashing colors in the dreariest atmosphere.” To New Mexicans, the notion of red and green being ugly, dreary and clashing in any way is a heretical concept. For denizens of the Land of Enchantment, red and green are absolutely stunning especially when plated together over blue corn enchiladas stuffed with carne adovada. Red and green…

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The Burger Stand – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

“If you need good hot grillin’, Try my burger stand. If you need a slice of thrillin’, I’m the baddest in the land. Any way you want it baby, I am your burger man.” ~Burger Man by ZZ Top Those of us invited on occasion to judge competitive food events try to follow a few very sensical but ironclad rules to ensure our evaluations are fair, balanced and accurate—or at least as accurate as any largely subjective matter can be. Though we commit these rules to memory, it’s very easy to forget about them and give way to unbridled desire, especially when you’re judging what has been deemed the best of the best, the most delicious of its genre. Such…

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Tesuque Village Market – Tesuque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

The most successful Indian revolt in North American history occurred on August 10th, 1680. On that day, more than 8,000 warriors from the various Native American pueblos in New Mexico put aside deep historical differences and banded together to drive the Spaniards from their ancestral lands. This event is celebrated each year in Tesuque Pueblo.  Tesuque Pueblo played an integral role in the rebellion. Two Tesuque runners were dispatched by pueblo leaders to enlist support for the revolt. The runners carried knotted deer hide cords to the various pueblos, each knot signifying a day. On each successive day, one knot was untied. When the final knot was untied it signified the day of attack. The annual celebration of this event…

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Sassella – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

In Cold Tuscan Stone, the first in a series of spellbinding mysteries set in Italy, author David P. Wagner did such a magnificent job in developing relatable characters and creating a sense of place that I felt myself transported to the world of Rick Montoya, the affable protagonist in David’s series.  Through David’s vivid imagery, I could almost taste, smell and experience la dolce vita of the Italian countryside.  I laughed with delightful voyeurism at the bumpkinly naivete of Herb and Shirley, an American couple who came to Italy to find an Italian chef for a restaurant they planned to open in Davenport, Iowa. Not surprisingly their benchmark for Italian cooking was the Olive Garden.   They were puzzled when…

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Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

My friend Schuyler jokes that because the diet of my formative years was mostly beans, chile and tortillas as well as chile, tortillas and beans, I’ve developed an insatiable curiosity and appetite for anything that isn’t beans, chile and tortillas (although I still love those). “No one else,” he claims “is equally enthusiastic about  bacon-infused decadence one day as he is the healthy paleo foods  the next.  Schuyler calls me  “the anti-Mikey” (the little boy in the Life cereal commercials who hated everything, except of course, Life cereal).  He argues that I like everything. In his eyes it doesn’t count that I loath, abhor and detest  cumin when it desecrates the purity of New Mexico’s sacrosanct chile because I love…

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Green Chile Cheeseburger Smackdown 2018 – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

New Mexico’s storied history will recall that 2009 was the year of the green chile cheeseburger.  It all started in May when Bobby Olguin, the gregarious owner of San Antonio’s Buckhorn Tavern bested Food Network celebrity chef Bobby Flay in a “green chile cheeseburger throwdown.”  Capitalizing on the momentum, Governor Bill Richardson called for a statewide green chile cheeseburger challenge to be held at the New Mexico State Fair in September.  Two months later, four-time James Beard award-winning author, the scintillating Cheryl Jamison spearheaded the development of the New Mexico  Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail, the first of the state Tourism Department’s Culinary Trails initiatives designed to further attract savvy visitors who make travel choices based on food. Not only did…