Ramona’s Mexican Cafe – Albuquerque, New Mexico
“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.” ~Laurie Colwin, Novelist Watch virtually any episode of Kitchen Nightmares and you might just be convinced that families can’t possibly work together in a restaurant. Kitchen Nightmares, one of Gordon Ramsay’s eight-hundred or so television shows, is rather formulaic–Ramsay spends a week with a failing restaurant in an attempt to revive the business. Almost invariably, the failing restaurant is owned and operated by a family. Almost invariably, the drama falls just short of Homer strangling Bart. Arguments on Kitchen Nightmares are loud and intense. Copious tears are shed. Predictably, the sagacity and sangfroid of Saint Ramsay brings sanity to the family fray and the family joins him in a rendering of kumbaya. Contrast a visit to a Kitchen Nightmares restaurant with a visit to Ramona’s Mexican Cafe and the only drama you might experience is the internal conflict of trying to figure out what to order from a terrific menu. Ramona, the matriarch of the Chavira Y Valles family, runs the kitchen with her sons.…