Bun Bo Hue Archives - Gil's Thrilling (And Filling) Blog

Pho Ginger – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil GardunoAugust 31, 2024September 7, 202412:00 AM

The Cultural Atlas reveals one aspect of Vietnamese life that is readily apparent to those among us well acquainted with Albuquerque’s Vietnamese restaurant families: “Family is the most important aspect of life in Vietnam. It is much more interdependent and tight-knit than what many Western cultures are familiar with. The cohesiveness and health of the family unit is often a main imperative. The “family unit” itself generally includes a larger nexus of relationships. Aunts, uncles, grandparents and other extended relatives often have very close relationships and provide a central support system.” During our time in the Land of Enchantment, we’ve seen just how interdependent and tight-knit Vietnamese families are. We’ve also experienced how warm and welcoming those families are. We…

Albuquerque New Mexico Vietnamese

Pho #1 – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil GardunoMay 6, 2024May 11, 20242:28 AM

Beef. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my pho spoon can reach. Okay, I’m no Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but if I were to count the ways I love beef, the count might stop at seven–as in the special seven courses of beef offered at Pho #1. Serving the Duke City for more than two decades, Pho #1 makes an audacious claim by virtue of its name but it’s a claim with which loyalists will agree. It’s an International District gem that continues to thrive in a neighborhood some diners eschew. With more than one-hundred items on the menu–not including the seven courses of beef–Pho #1 offers…

Albuquerque Vietnamese

Viet Taste – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil GardunoFebruary 26, 2024February 27, 20244:32 AM

In the “gobble and go” pace of contemporary American life, it’s sometimes difficult to remember what you ate during your last meal, much less recall the sensory experience of that meal. When that happens to true gourmands, they will actively seek a memorable dining experience in which all five senses are invoked. One of the best restaurants in Albuquerque in which to have such a sensory experience is almost any Vietnamese restaurant. One such example is Viet Taste which opened on April 4, 2007. Even more than most Vietnamese restaurants, Viet Taste exemplifies comprehensive eating, the most sublime form of Vietnamese cooking and eating. This style of eating involves all five senses. In comprehensive eating, you eat with your eyes…

Albuquerque New Mexico Vietnamese

Basil Leaf – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil GardunoSeptember 2, 2023September 3, 20231:09 PM

“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed Popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.” – Anthony Bourdain Genesis 11 recounts a time when the entire world had a common language and dwelt as one people. Alas, hubris overtook the generations of survivors of the great flood who decided, with great unity of purpose, to build a city named Babel with a tower…

New Mexico Rated 23 Rio Rancho Vietnamese

Saigon 2 Restaurant – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil GardunoApril 2, 2023April 5, 20239:21 PM

In Chinese and Vietnamese cultures, numerology is very important. If you’ve traveled extensively, you may have wondered why the term “Pho” followed by a number is so commonplace. Often these numbers are considered lucky–and not necessarily across an entire culture. A number may be lucky on a personal level, perhaps marking a date that’s special to the restaurant owner. Espy a restaurant named Pho 66and the number 66 may well represent the year the owner fled Vietnam during the war. Restaurants named Pho 75 may well be honoring 1975, the year Saigon fell. Numerical repetition is also considered fortuitous. The City of Vision certainly counts the number eleven as a lucky number. November 11th, 2011 at precisely 11 o’clock AM…

Albuquerque Rated 23 Vietnamese

Saigon Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil GardunoApril 10, 2022April 10, 20221:54 AM

According to some stereotypes, when you eat Chinese food, you’ll be hungry an hour later. That stereotype is known as the “Chinese food paradox.” One of the culprits behind that stereotype is rice, a very starchy food which metabolizes quickly. Others blame monosodium glutamate (MSG) when hunger creeps in shortly after finishing a meal. Italian food is also shrouded in stereotype. “The trouble with eating Italian food,” according to British writer George Miller, “is that five or six days later you’ll be hungry again.” With Italian food–at least Americanized Italian food served in some of the ubiquitous chains–portions are often enough to feed a village in a developing country. A plethora of pasta, tons of tomato sauce, mountains of…

Albuquerque Asian New Mexico Vietnamese

Bamboo by Kulantro – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil GardunoApril 9, 2022September 11, 202410:32 AM

Hawaiian pizza, black licorice, blue cheese, anchovies, candy corn, cilantro…these are among the pantheon of foods Readers Digest says everyone either loves or hates. And by “everyone,” Readers Digest includes such culinary glitterati as Julia Child who expressed her loathing for for cilantro in a 2002 interview with Larry King. The towering chef proclaimed she detested cilantro, saying it has a “dead taste” to her. Food Network personality Ina Gartner is even more blatant: “I just hate it,” she related in a Munchie’s podcast. “To me, it’s so strong and it actually tastes like soap to me, but it’s so strong it overpowers every other flavor.” Why then do some people have such a profound cattiness toward cilantro? According…

Rio Rancho Vietnamese

Pho Bar – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil GardunoDecember 8, 2021December 13, 20218:28 PM

“In food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of man” – Vietnamese Proverb Western sensitivities cause even those among us who consider ourselves gustatorily open-minded to utter an “ick” or two at what is culinarily acceptable–even considered delicious–in other cultures. Some of us would recoil in disgust at the notion of eating grilled dog, roasted cat, grain-fed mice, beating cobra heart, soft-boiled fetal duck or silk caterpillars, but these are dishes an official Vietnam culture site considers “something special” when skilfully cooked. What the watered down American palate often considers disgusting may, in fact, have deep cultural underpinnings, some of the aforementioned “delicacies” even gracing the tables of royalty. Oftentimes things Americans consider inedible creepy crawlies are eaten…

Albuquerque Closed in 2022 Dog Friendly Gone But Not Forgotten New Mexico Vietnamese

Bamboo Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil GardunoFebruary 27, 2021March 23, 202312:01 AM

In his 30s, curmudgeonly London food critic Jay Rayner who’s been called the “enfant terrible (literally “terrifying child) of the gastronomic scene,” came to the realization that he hated hangovers more than he hated being drunk. During a visit to a Vietnamese restaurant in London, he achieved an epiphany: “huge steaming bowls of a deeply aromatic beef broth called pho, bobbing with slivers of meat and wide rice noodles – would prove a perfect cure. The head pain would ease. The pitch and roll of the stomach would steady. A gentle, soft comfy cloud of well being would descend. And all this for not very much money at all.” A 2017 article from the travel experts of Lonely Planet also…