Tag: Burgers

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Turtle Mountain Brewing Company – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno3:27 PM

The Tewa name “Oku Pin” which translates in English to “Turtle Mountain” has three meanings of significance to the people of Okay Owingeh, one of New Mexico’s great Tewa speaking Northern New Mexico Pueblos. “Oku Pin” was the the Indian name given to Dr. Alfonso Ortiz who obtained worldwide prominence as an anthropologist and ethnologist until his death in 1998. Ortiz was born and raised in San Juan Pueblo which in 2006 officially changed its name to Okay Owingeh. “Oku Pin” is also the Tewa name for Sandia Peak, the 10,678-feet high mountain which provides a spectacular backdrop for Albuquerque, Bernalillo and Rio Rancho. When Nico Ortiz, son of the famous anthropologist launched his inaugural restaurant and microbrewery in 1997, it just made sense that it should be called Turtle Mountain, a name which pays homage to his father and to the magnificent peaks under whose shadow his enterprise would flourish. Today, Turtle Mountain has also become synonymous with good food and (ostensibly) very good beer. Nico Ortiz has dedicated his life to the pursuit and production of good beer and has garnered tremendous recognition for his efforts, including a multi-page spread on the November, 2005 edition of New Mexico…

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Sazon Con Amor – Bernalillo, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

The Broadway musical Rent taught us that a year is comprised of “five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.”   Instead of measuring the length of a year “in daylights, sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee, inches, miles, laughter or strife,” Rent encouraged us to measure a year in life in seasons of love.  Not surprisingly, Seasons of Love (a song from the musical from which the italicized lyrics originated) came immediately to mind when we espied Sazon Con Amor, a food truck (that’s mobile kitchen to you, Bob) parked on Highway 550 in Bernalillo. Sazon Con Amor translates from Spanish to “Seasoning With Love,” but that was close enough to Rent’s definitive song to trigger a day-long earworm.  It also prompted me to ruminate on the many times chefs have expressed that the secret ingredient in their cooking is love, but until discovering Sazon Con Amor, we’ve never heard of any chef bragging about seasoning with love.  It’s not just semantics either.  Cookbooks refer to seasoning as “the herbs, spices and herb-spice mixes used during the preparation of food”  (by  contrast, condiments consist of ingredient combinations (often including spices) added by a diner at the point of consumption).  It would be…

BurgersRating: N/R (Not Rated)TexasUnited States

JewBoy Burgers – Austin, Texas

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

With hordes of eager eaters forming lines around select restaurants–if not the block–you’d think those diners were gum-snapping Swifties clamoring to enter the venue of a Taylor Swift concert  That’s the case not only in barbecue joints anointed with Michelin star and James Beard Foundation honors, not to mention restaurants featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  Queues for ‘cue, lines for lasagna, cavalcades for calamari…that’s pretty much the way it is at all the time in Austin.  It is a foodie city after my own heart.  I loathe lines so much, I’d rather arrive half an hour early than to stand in a line for more than ten minutes. Alas, on a day in which drizzle spritzed city streets, I arrived at Jewboy Burgers fifteen minutes after it opened.  Forget what you hear about Austinites being fair weather diners.  They were there in droves with a lengthy line literally out the door.  That’s where I stood (in misty rain) for twenty minutes before making my way inside.  There was a long line inside the restaurant, too.  Sullen diners also waited for a table to come available, the more intrepid among them taking their burger bounty outdoors.  A fellow queruer related…

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The Pantry Dos – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

There’s no annual event I enjoy more than the Roadrunner Food Bank’s Souper Bowl which takes place one week before some ballyhooed football game.  That game is the National Football League’s Super Bowl, a star-studded event in which the celebrity with the best name (Taylor Swift) doesn’t even play football.  Celebrities abound at the Souper Bowl, too, but they’re real people, the type of which you would enjoy sharing a meal with.  During my twelvth year of serving as a judge at the Souper Bowl, I had the privilege and pleasure of spending time with several of those local celebrities.  I wouldn’t trade a minute with them for an hour with Kendrick Lamar (whoever he is) or Taylor Swift. For years, two of those celebrities–Steph Duran of  Magic 995 and the legendary TJ Trout of 96.3 KKOB–have made morning and afternoons much more enjoyable (particularly when driving the city’s mean streets) for denizens of the Duke City.  Their astute observations and facial expressions (particularly Steph’s “Sally” face) as they sipped some thirty soups helped make the 2025 Souper Bowl thoroughly enjoyable.  You probably wouldn’t call Glenn Walters a “celebrity” unless you’re intimate with state government where he’s revered among the…

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Upscale Rio – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

NOTE:  Upscale Rio shuttered its doors for good on 4 December 2025. My friend Schuyler used to joke that every meal we enjoyed together was “upscale” because “up” was the direction his scale climbed when we finished our marathon meals.  We were quite the trenchermen in our youth, bona fide threats to any all-you-can-eat buffet in town.  Back then–as impoverished junior noncommissioned officers in the Air Force–ten dollar meals were near the upper end of we could afford with an occasional fifteen dollar splurge.  Back then, some thirty years ago, you could get quite a bit of food for ten dollars.  Fast forward a few decades and the term “upscale” has a different meaning for both of us.  We have both been able to reap the harvest of our hard work and are able to (on occasion) afford upscale restaurants that features fine-dining. Back when a dollar would buy four burgers at Griff’s, we couldn’t have conceived of any burger being considered “upscale.”  Not even the most sage of soothsayers could possibly have had the prescience to predict the price of burgers exceeding ten dollars.  Today, it’s not uncommon to find burgers flirting with the twenty dollar mark (maybe that’s…

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Sobremesa Restaurant & Brewery – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In June, 2021, Eater.com published a list of “the 21 Essential Restaurants in Albuquerque.” Unlike so many “clickbait” articles from national publications purporting to tell New Mexicans which restaurants across the Land of Enchantment serve the “best this” and the “best that,” the Eater feature was penned by Justin De La Rosa who actually knows this state very well.  In fact, in 2015 Justin earned a “Local Hero Award” from Edible New Mexico as “best food writer.” If you’re wondering what constitutes an “Essential Restaurant,” Eater’s erstwhile national critic Bill Addison defined the term to mean “indispensable to their neighborhoods, and eventually to their towns and whole regions,” to “ultimately become vital to how we understand ourselves, and others, at the table.”   In other words, restaurants accorded the “essential” designation by Eater are more than among the best restaurants in their town.  They are transcendent presences that feed the soul as well as the stomach. It’s a virtual certainty that Mary & Tito’swould make the list after having been named one of America’s 38 Essential Restaurants in 2018<.  It’s also no surprise that restaurants (Campo at Los Poblanos and Frenchish) helmed by multiple-time James Beard Foundation Chef of the Year…

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Slate Street Billiards Bar & Grille – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Discovering a bubbling crude…Texas tea, black gold, oil that is, transformed Jed Clampett from poor mountaineer who barely kept his family fed to a millionaire residing in a Beverly (Hills that is, swimming pools, movie stars) mansion.  Moving from a tiny ramshackle hovel to a luxurious and palatial dwelling brought with it one surprise after another for Jed and his family.  Among them was “a good strong eatin’ table” upon which “you could serve up a whole barbecued steer.”  Jed’s nephew Jethro who graduated at the top of his glass…”by a good foot” found out from a friend that the room in which the fancy eatin’ table was centered was called a “billy-yard room.”  Ergo, the table was a “billy-yard table.” The billy-yard table was named for a large “awful plain lookin‘” “rascal” (a rhinoceros) mounted on the wall.  “Judging from the size of his head, he must have been monstrous big” Uncle Jed observed, “I reckon that’s why they had to build a extra strong table.”  That fancy eatin’ table was featured in several episodes of the Beverly Hills, a hilarious comedy about a backwoods family from the hills of the Ozarks, who move to posh Beverly Hills, California, after…

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Joe’s Farm Grill – Gilbert, Arizona

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

When primitive men, women and asgender people crossed the Bering Straits to escape global freezing, they eventually made their way to the Phoenix area.  Ever since, their progeny has been trying to figure out how to escape global scorching which transpires on most summer days (seven or eight months a year).  They built Biosphere 2, the world’s largest controlled environment.  They built a swimming pool in Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks.  When compelled to leave the air conditioned confines of their homes, Phoenicians risk third-degree burns from their car doors and  flee to their summer homes in Prescott and Heber where instead of 130, the temperature is only 99. They also join hordes of tourists in a utopian concept called Agritopia.  Though that sounds like the name for a 60s hippie commune, Agritopia is an area devoted to an urban agriculture community.  At the heart of Agritopia are fields owned and tended to by the Johnston family.  Perhaps realizing they could make more money hawking burgers than selling vegetables, the family converted the 1960s era farmhouse.  Today it’s the site of Joe’s Farm Grill.  It’s supposed to be a “take on a modern design of avery large 50’s…

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The Chuck Box – Tempe, Arizona

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“I’ll have the great big one,” the barrel-chested behemoth behind me chortled.  One of his companions, a bookish nerd followed up with “I’ll have the big one.”  Not to be outdone, several male Arizona State University (ASU) students took turns ordering either the “great big one” or the “big one.”  Each order was followed by raucous laughter as if they were the first students ever to place their orders for burgers named for their respective sizes (the burgers, not the students’ manhood).  Not one of them dared ask for “the little one” for fear of being humiliated or even ostracized by their fellows.  “What a brilliant marketing strategy!,” I thought as I, too, ordered a “great big one” even though I wasn’t that hungry The great big one, as you may have surmised, is the biggest burger available at The Chuckbox, an ASU area institution and one of the oldest businesses in Downtown Tempe.  Now in operation for nearly half a century, it’s been continuously owned by Frank, formerly an executive for a now defunct burger chain.  When the chain wanted him to move, Frank decide to remain in Phoenix to focus on his family, and create a new, and…

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On The Flip – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Though I pride myself on having a sesquipedalian vocabulary, very often pop culture vernacular escapes me.  Even food memes borne of pop culture are well over my head.  If you’re familiar with or use such terms as “good soup,” “cheugy,” “phone eats first,” “glizzy” and “caviar bump,”  you must be from the Gen Z generation.  Were I to use these terms, it would make me seem like a patronizing old fossil trying to be cool. During a December, 2023 visit to the Tin Can Alley, my Kim and I came a restaurant with a curious name neither of us could comprehend.  We quickly dismissed the notion that “On The Flip” had something to do with Albuquerque drivers extending their middle fingers in a salute denoting that other drivers are number one.   We then agreed the name has something to do with food that’s flipped.  Pancakes maybe.  Burgers probably. It turns out On The Flip is subtitled “beach grub perfected.”  My first experience with beach grub came in Massachusetts where beach grub consisted of lobster rolls, fried clams and tuna grinders.  In Mississippi beach grub was oysters, shrimp and crab.  None of these sumptuous seaside favorites–perfected or otherwise–appear on On…

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The Skillet – Las Vegas, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

A man comes home after a long day.  His wife then hits him in the back of the head with a frying pan.  He clutches his head in pain asking her, “Honey why? Why did you do that?” She answers, “When I was doing your laundry I found a receipt in your pocket with a woman’s name on it.” He responds, “That’s why you hit me? Honey, Mary-Ann is a horse I bet on.  That’s the receipt for my bet.” She accepts that and apologizes and they make up.  Next week the same thing happens. He comes home and is struck in the back of his head with a frying pan. The husband asks, “AGAIN? You hit me in the head with a frying pan again, why?!”  The wife looks at him and says, “Your horse called.” Believe it or not, in the 50s and 60s (long before my time), wives bashing their husbands on their heads with frying pans passed for humor.  Banner Graphic confirms this gallows humor trend: “The image of an angry woman hitting her uncooperative husband over the head with a frying pan is usually a cartoonishly laughing matter.  After all, it’s a staple of comic…