Spicy Junction – Albuquerque, New Mexico
While perusing the menu at Spicy Junction, you might hearken back to The Dream, the very eclectic restaurant owned and operated by Pakistan emigrant Babu Bhatt in an uproariously funny episode of Seinfeld. As Jerry Seinfeld observed about The Dream’s menu, “he’s serving Mexican, Italian, Chinese. He’s all over the place.” Spicy Junction’s menu is similarly diverse, a melange of Indian, Venezuelan, Middle Eastern, Indo-Chinese and even pizza and burgers splayed temptingly onto three individual menus. That the menu is so “all over the place” makes great sense in that the chef worked as a chef at the location’s previous tenant, El Chamo Arabe. In 2023, El Chamo Arabe introduced Duke City diners to a melange of Venezuelan and Mediterranean foods all in one menu. While El Chamo Arabe now operates at Rio Rancho’s The Block (7805 Enchanted Hills Blvd.), its former chef and his bride took over the Menaul space. They’re both Indian, but rather than serve Indian food exclusively, they decided to retain the existing menu and have added pizza. If it sounds like an adventure in cuisine types you may not have thought go so well together, you’ll be more than pleasantly surprised at just how diverse…
