Tag: Bun Bo Hue

AlbuquerqueNew MexicoVietnamese

Basil Leaf – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“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 MexicoRated 23Rio RanchoVietnamese

Saigon 2 Restaurant – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

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…

AlbuquerqueRated 23Vietnamese

Saigon Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

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…

AlbuquerqueAsianNew MexicoVietnamese

Bamboo by Kulantro – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

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 RanchoVietnamese

Pho Bar – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno

“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…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2022Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoVietnamese

Bamboo Grill – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno

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…