AK Deli – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

NOTE: Although AK Deli shuttered its doors in 2020, you can still have many of its wonderful sandwiches at AK Pizza. “You’ll never be one of us,” my brother-in-law Chuck quipped in his best Baron von Trapp voice. He wasn’t talking about me being part of the family. He was talking about me being a Chicagoan. Chuck wasn’t being mean-spirited or condescending in any way. The only person not born in the Windy City whom he considers a true Chicagoan is da coach Mike Ditka. “He’s the embodiment of Chicago. It’s in his soul. It’s his attitude.” he explained. Michael…

Diane’s Bakery & Deli – Silver City, New Mexico

In 2011, New Mexico Magazine recruited several local food writers and asked us to introduce readers to ten of “New Mexico’s Best Eats” in several categories:  Best Green Chile Cheeseburger, Best New Mexican Soul Food, Best Fine Dining, Best Enchiladas, Bet Vegetarian New Mexican Food, Best Road Food, Beste Local Seasonal Ingredients, Best Contemporary Native American Food, Best Chocolate and Best Carne Adovada.   For the most part, writers waxed eloquent about “the usual suspects” in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The most noteable exception was Lesley S. King, a distinguished writer who graced New Mexico Magazine’s as the “King of…

TONY CAPUTO’S MARKET & DELI – Salt Lake City, Utah

Most of us know someone like Lucy Van Pelt, the irascible, bossy, highly opinionated diva in the syndicated Peanuts comic strip.   Since her debut in 1952, Lucy has been the perpetrator of two long-running gags.  One involves her holding the football (ostensibly so that Charlie Brown can kick a field goal or extra point) and pulling the ball away because she doesn’t want Charlie Brown to get it dirty.  The second gag parodies the lemonade stand operated by many young children under spacious skies.  Instead of a lemonade stand, she operates a psychiatric booth where she offers advice and…

Roma Bakery & Deli – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Galdamez and Albertine. If you saw those names on a building, you might expect to see them appended with “Attorneys at Law.” That’s especially true if the building is in the area immediately north of Albuquerque’s burgeoning downtown district, an area teeming with lawyers’ offices and bail bondsmen (is bondspeople the politically correct term?). Instead, the building in which Oscar Galdamez and Bruce Albertine ply their own noble trade houses a diminutive and charming dining establishment, Roma Bakery and Deli. You won’t see their named displayed in any officious self-aggrandizement manner, but it’s a good bet you’ll get to know…

Sherman’s Deli & Bakery – Palm Springs & Palm Desert, California

Not everyone appreciated my friend Bob’s stark honesty as much as I did. For nearly twelve years, Bob was my most trusted source for information on the Santa Fe dining scene. He was also a huge advocate for my writing, even when his reaction to one of my particularly “long way around” missives was “what?.” From a style perspective, he was a “get to the point” guy while your humble blogger sometimes (okay, okay, always) takes a circuitous, raconteur’s route to get somewhere. Bob often chided me for not liking cumin on New Mexican food, once telling me “when you…

Nosh Jewish Delicatessen & Bakery – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

You see, Elaine, the key to eating a black and white cookie is that you wanna get some black and some white in each bite. Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate. And yet still somehow racial harmony eludes us. If people would only look to the cookie, all our problems would be solved. ~Jerry Seinfeld While creative personnel and television promos touted Seinfeld as the “show about nothing,” the truth is every episode of the half-hour comedy offered a number of complex plots, sub-plots and plot twists. So much of the hilarity centered around food moments that readers of…

Bode’s General Merchandise Deli & Bakery – Abiquiu, New Mexico

Mention food and convenience store in the same sentence and the first thing likely to come to mind is one of those perpetually rotating, alutaceous hot dogs seared to a leathery sheen under a heat lamp inferno. Not even a large slushie spiked with your favorite adult beverage would make that hot dog palatable. Mention food and gas station in the same sentence and all of a sudden that leathery hot dog at the convenience store sounds like a gourmet meal. Salty, cylindrically shaped dry meat snacks with the texture of sawdust and air-filled bags of Cool Ranch Doritos are…

Butters Pancakes & Cafe – Scottsdale, Arizona

“Spread your tiny wings and fly away And take the snow back with you Where it came from on that day So, little snowbird take me with you when you go To the land of gentle breezes where the peaceful waters flow.” ~ Anne Murray Every autumn, gaggles of geese, flocks of ducks, kettles of hawks and constructions of cranes begin their long, arduous migration from the continent’s northern regions to warmer climes in the South. They fly in formation to more idyllic and much warmer locales such as the Bosque del Apache in New Mexico. Similarly, large numbers of…

Red Rock Deli – Albuquerque, New Mexico

America may be a multicultural melting pot, but thriving within its most populous metropolises are ethnic neighborhoods–pockets of diversity residing in two worlds, retaining many of the cultural and culinary traditions of their motherland while integrating into and pursuing the American dream. Cities such as Chicago have long realized that these ethnic enclaves offer a treasure trove of cultural and culinary experiences. Most of these neighborhoods welcome culinary tourism–the opportunity to showcase the cuisine of their homelands. One such example is the city of Chicago which boasts of the largest Polish population outside of Warsaw (as many as 183,000 by…

Coda Bakery – Albuquerque, New Mexico

JP, my former boss at Intel used to pride himself on consistently working “half days.” If you’re thinking you’d like a job where you work only four hours a day, you’ve misinterpreted his definition of “half days.” To him, half days is a literal term meaning twelve hours a day. When most of us are done for after only nine or ten hours, he was just starting what he called his “second shift.” Very few of us have the stamina, initiative and especially the passion for what we do to work “half days.” I know restaurateurs for whom half days…

Delicias Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico

There’s no denying the ever-increasing popularity of Mexican food across America, but it may surprise you to learn that in the estimation of some sources, it has supplanted Italian food as the favorite ethnic cuisine in the land. Marketplace, a nationally syndicated business oriented radio program with more than nine-million listeners a week, says there’s no bones about it, calling Mexican food “the most popular ethnic food in the U.S., bigger than Italian or Chinese.” Askmen.com confirms only that “Mexican has become one of the three most popular cuisines in the U.S., with nearly 90% of the total population having…