Upscale Rio – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED)
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…
