Tag: Pizza

New MexicoPizzaRating: ExcellentRio Rancho

Davido’s Pizza – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:42 AM

Some might call the American Realty and Petroleum Company (AMREP for short) a pioneering visionary for its early 1960s purchase of over 50,000 acres on the dusty Sandoval County plains that are now Rio Rancho. Others use different–and not necessarily as complimentary–adjectives to describe the land speculator whose clever marketing attracted hundreds of New Yorkers (among others) to the then untamed western fringes overlooking the Rio Grande. They came because Rio Rancho was a “lucrative investment” with half acre lots going for under $800 in the 1960s. They came because Rio Rancho offered “fishing, camping, swimming and golfing in a place where the sun shone 360 days a year.” They came to live in an area which sloped “among the greenest, most fertile valleys in the world.” Middle income retirees from New York initially made up a significant percentage of Rio Rancho’s population, earning the community the sobriquet “Little New York.” The nickname is still bandied about even though Rio Rancho’s population is comprised of people from all over the country. In its first decade, the fledgling newcomer became the sixth largest city in New Mexico and by 1990, the census indicated the city had grown to more than 32,000…

AlbuquerqueBar & GrillClosed in 2023Fine DiningGone But Not ForgottenGreekNew Mexican

Nick & Jimmy’s Bar & Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:46 AM

Legendary American chef, author and television personality Julia Child was often exasperated with what she perceived as American’s propensity for culinary laziness, once commenting that “the trend in the U.S.A. was toward speed and the elimination of work.” “Americans,” she noted, equated as “gourmet” such “horrible glop” as “TV dinners, frozen vegetables, canned mushrooms, fish sticks, Jell-O salads, marshmallows and spray-can whipped cream.“ Julia Child obviously didn’t know Dave Hurayt, a good friend and fellow gastronome who’s shared some wonderful recipes with me. While Dave may not have spent two years and nearly 300 pounds of flour attempting to bake the perfect loaf of French bread as Julia Child once did, he experiments painstakingly with the recipes he creates, laboring assiduously until those recipes achieve his high standards of perfection. Perfection can sometimes be painful as he found out while experimenting with a recipe utilizing burnt bourbon. Much like a mad scientist adding a catalytic chemical to a burning beaker, the results were dramatic. He blew the glass right out of his new KitchenAid oven. When a true kitchen warrior and gourmet such as Dave eschews his culinary domain and eats at one restaurant for seven out of nine consecutive…

Dog FriendlyPizzaRating: N/R (Not Rated)United StatesUtah

Nomad East – Salt Lake City, Utah

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

A-Team leader “Hannibal” Smith (George Peppard) used to say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”  We learned during our trip to Salt Lake City that sometimes baking in a little flexibility into a well thought-out plan can produce results even better than expected.  Such was the case with our trip to Salt Lake City.   Capably assisted by my dear friend Becky Mercuri,  I did a lot of research on the Salt Lake City area restaurant scene, compiling a list of dozens of prospective restaurants.  We literally didn’t even begin winnowing down that list until just before setting out each day. Predictably, some of the critically acclaimed restaurants on our list were as good as expected.  More often they were even better.  Undoubtedly the biggest surprise of our week-long vacation was a restaurant which hadn’t even been on our list.  After the Female Foodies steered us to Sweet Lake Biscuits & Limeade and Freshies Lobster Co. we began looking even more critically at their “15 Best Restaurants in Salt Lake City (2021)” compilation.  Ranking tenth and listed as “the best new restaurant” in the city was Nomad East, an eatery with a special emphasis on artisan pizza. We expected…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyKoreanNew MexicoPizzaRating: Good

Urban 360 Pizza, Grill and Tap House – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno8:09 AM

Babu: Our specials are tacos, moussaka and franks and beans. Jerry: Well, what do you recommend my good fellow? Babu:Oh, the turkey. ~”The Cafe, Seinfeld, Season 3, Episode 7 While perusing the menu at Urban 360 Pizza, Grill and Tap House, my ever-witty friend Ryan “Break the Chain” Scott commented that the menu reminded him of The Dream, the very eclectic restaurant owned and operated by Pakistan emigrant Babu Bhatt in an uproariously funny episode of Seinfeld. As Jerry Seinfeld observed about The Dream’s menu, “he’s serving Mexican, Italian, Chinese. He’s all over the place.” Urban 360’s menu is similarly diverse, a melange of Asian, American and European dishes splayed temptingly onto three pages. That the menu is so “all over the place” makes great sense in that the term “360” itself represents a complete circle as in the shape of planet Earth itself. Okay, the Earth is actually an oblong spheroid, but that’s close to round. Unlike The Dream, Urban 360’s menu has a rhyme and reason, a cohesion. Moreover, Urban 360 succeeds a similarly named and similarly eclectic restaurant, the aptly named Eclectic Urban Pizzeria and Tap House, a magnificent shooting star which fizzled away much too quickly,…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2017Closed in 2022Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenItalianNew MexicoPizza

Rustico Italian Kitchen – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

What does it say about a restaurant when it runs out of food?  Nine times out of ten, you’d probably say it’s either brand new and doesn’t yet have a feel for its traffic volume or their inventory management just isn’t very good.  Our inaugural visit to Rustico Italian Kitchen on a bright Sunday morning introduced us to another reason.  The restaurant was so busy the previous night that diners polished off everything on the menu save for pizza and salad.  For denizens of Albuquerque’s far northeast heights, that’s actually reason for celebration.  It means outstanding Italian food has finally made a triumphant return to this quadrant of the city. Not that many years ago, I lamented that with the exception of Paisano’s Italian Restaurant on Eubank and Joe’s Pasta House in Rio Rancho, there was a dearth of great Italian restaurants in the Duke City area. Then came Torinos at Home followed not long thereafter by the M’Tucci’s Italian restaurant dynasty.  Today Duke City area diners who want to mangia bene have a wealth of options.  In March, 2021, Rustico Italian Kitchen entered the fray.  With a dynamic chef at the helm, Rustico began generating enthusiasm even before it…