Tag: Refried Beans

AlbuquerqueBreakfastBreakfast BurritosMexicanNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Outstanding

La Sierra New Mexican Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“I eat uno, dos, tres, quatro burritos Pretty soon I can’t fit in my Speedos Well, I hope they feed us lots of chicken fajitas And a pitcher of margaritas” ~Taco Grande by Weird Al Yankovic While perusing the slogans–One Bite And You’re Hooked; Cooked Slow, Served Hot, Loved Fast; Hot Chile makes Everything Better” on the windows of La Sierra, I half expected to see lyrics from the “Weird “Al Yankovic song “Taco Grande”  (a parody of the song “Rico Suave”).  What I didn’t expect was for La Sierra to live up to its self-aggrandizing hype.  Of course, diners always hope a restaurant is as good as it professes to be, but all-too-often an eatery doesn’t live up to the hype.  La Sierra does…and then some! Albuquerque’s very first instantiation of La Sierra (not to be confused with the venerable Mac’s La Sierra) launched in July,  2025 on the corner of Menaul and University at the site of a former Little Anita’s.   Some nine months later, a second La Sierra opened its doors.  This one is located on Alameda just west of Corrales Road. You may recall that this location once housed The Whole Enchilada which was later renamed…

AlbuquerqueBreakfastDog FriendlyMexicanNew MexicoRating: Very GoodTacos

Foodtopia – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

When a restaurant with the curious name “Foodtopia” surfaced in 2022, long-suffering readers of Gil’s Thrilling… probably realized an etymology lesson would soon be in order.   If the suffix “topia” intrigued you as much as it did your grandiloquent blogger, hang on.  First, a review of what we all know.  Utopia is “a seemingly perfect society, one without flaws, where everyone is content and conflict and strife are unknown.”  One example of a Utopian society is the movie Zootopia in which animals live in harmony and lions sing kumbaya with antelope.  More common than movies about Utopian societies are movies and literature about dystopia, “societies that are either extremely chaotic or extremely authoritative, a hellish place where most people suffer.”  No, it’s not your place of employment, but rather something like Planet of the Apes or George Orwell’s 1984. The common element in these two opposite societal types is the suffix “topia,”  a Greek word meaning “a place with specified characteristics.”  An imaginary society with both good (Utopian) and bad (Dystopian) features might be called a “mixtopia.” Some posit an imaginary place where everything (especially the government) is as bad as it can be.  Fittingly, the term for this…

AlbuquerqueChickenMexicanNew MexicoRating: Very Good

El Rey Del Pollo – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno10:29 AM

My environmentally-conscious, Prius-driving friend Bruce “Sr. Plata” Silver has a much smaller carbon footprint than that carbon credit-trading hypocrite Al Gore.  No environmental activist would ever condemn Sr. Plata for fouling the air and water with a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, he leaves large “al carbon fingerprints,” the finger-licking kind you get from frequenting restaurants which specialize in pollo al carbon, chicken prepared over charcoal. Pollo al carbon has spoiled Sr. Plata. He craves those juicy, spatchcocked, golden-skinned birds speckled with black char, chicken so meaty and delicious it makes store-bought rotisserie chickens look positively anorexic in comparison. Who can blame Sr. Plata?  Made well, pollo al carbon is absolutely addictive. “Finger-licking good” might be a cliche, but there’s truth to this one particular cliche as it applies to al carbon. Over the years, Albuquerque’s Mexican restaurants haven’t exactly been beacons of light pointing the way for seekers of pollo al carbon to sate their maws with full repast.  Certainly not like Sr. Plata’s birthplace of Los Angeles where you can’t toss the leg bone of a chicken without hitting another poultry place.  During our culinary excursions, Sr. Plata and I thought we had discovered the motherlode…