AlbuquerqueMariscosMexicanRating: Very Good

Mariscos Altamar – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:32 PM

“Forget what you thought you knew about Mexican food!” That should be a cardinal rule for unacculturated diners when traveling to Mexico–or visiting Mariscos Altamar–for the first time. Many of the dishes some Americans commonly believe typify Mexican cooking are either not Mexican at all (chimichangas and fajitas, for example), or are prepared using inauthentic techniques and ingredients (such as “nachos” crafted from melted Velveeta heaped over a dish of corn chips, a recipe I’ve actually seen on a cookbook published by a charity for which I almost withdrew support based on such recipes). Because Mexico spans several climatic zones and a diverse topography, its cuisine varies from region to region.  The favorite foods of the Mexican coast may not even be available further inland.  Inland foods may not be as commonly served on the coasts.  Ah, those coasts!  Mexico’s beautiful and varied coastal waters are not only pristine in their azure purity, they yield an abundant and unsurpassed assortment of deliciously prepared delicacies from the sea. When Hector Hernandez moved to Albuquerque from Ronald Reagan country (Orange County, California), it didn’t take him long to determine that the Duke City restaurant scene lacked traditional Mexican seafood (mariscos) restaurants–the type…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2012Gone But Not ForgottenNew Mexican

Silvano’s New Mexican Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno10:17 AM

My friend Carrie Seidman, the elegant and erstwhile restaurant critic for the Albuquerque Tribune prefaced one restaurant review by saying “sometimes pleasure comes with a price tag.” That pithy aphorism should probably be appended by paraphrasing Luke 12:48: “from those who charge a lot, much will be expected.”   Expensive meals come with  expectations of intoxicating aromas and tastes, impeccable service and a classy, relaxed milieu in which to bask in the glory of a decadent, memorable meal.  Such meals are worth it only if afterwards you consider every dollar well spent.  Any regrets and the experience will leave you (and your wallet or purse) empty. Fortunately for the most penurious and parsimonious among us, there is no absolute correlation of price tag to enjoyment.  There is no guarantee that an expensive meal will be a good one…but there is most certainly a correlation between spending a lot of money and the pain and regret you feel afterwards if the meal didn’t achieve lofty expectations.  Conversely, some of the very best restaurant meals to be enjoyed are often those that not only provide great value for the money, they serve genuinely good food and provide simple, but very pleasant and rewarding…

New MexicoRating: Very GoodRio Rancho

The Chill Zone Frozen Yogurt – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:46 PM

Returning to the United States in 1985 after my first year in England, there were two things that surprised me.  The first was the difficulty of getting used to driving on the “Yank” side of the road again.  Driving on the “wrong” side had required a high state of alertness and conscious thought until it had become a habit.  Expecting to transition easily upon my return to the fruited plain, my concentration waned until I found myself driving toward several cars on their side of the street (talk about road rage).  The second surprise was the sheer volume of frozen yogurt shops in Chicago and Las Vegas where I spent three weeks before returning to England.  Frozen yogurt was no stranger to me.  I lived in Massachusetts in 1978 (where some of the country’s very best ice cream is made) when the very first packaged frozen yogurt was introduced.  At its inception yogurt was marketed as a healthier, less caloric alternative to ice cream, but it wasn’t an immediate hit because of its lip-pursing tartness.  Manufacturers went back to the drawing board, modified their recipes to include more sugar and yogurt began to take off.  By 1986, sales of yogurt…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2016FrenchGone But Not ForgottenRating: Outstanding

Cafe Jean Pierre – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno9:23 PM

A few years ago when France was the target of xenophobic sentiment and  some political commentators even advocated boycotting all things French, my vivacious friend Janet Resnik remained a fervent Francophile.  With the simple retort, “ah, but the food,” she found it easy to diffuse dour diatribes in which not a single good thing was said about France.  Not even the most ardent anti-French could argue that French food isn’t among the very best in the world. In Albuquerque, chef Jean-Pierre Gozard has been more instrumental than anyone in providing fine French alternatives to the ubiquitous chile laden cuisine that seems to define the city.  Chef Gozard started it all in 1975 with the launch of La Crepe Michel, a hugely popular restaurant that’s still going strong nearly four decades later.  In 1979 he opened Le Marmiton, one of the four or five restaurants I’ve missed most from among all those which have closed since we returned to Albuquerque.  From 1987 through 1995, Chef Gozard plied his talents in Casa Vieja, a Corrales landmark. After leaving Casa Vieja, it looked for a while as if Albuquerque had seen the last of the über chef, but in 2008 he turned up at…

AlbuquerqueAsianClosed in 2012Gone But Not Forgotten

Pacific Rim Asian Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno5:52 PM

In 1520, after sailing past South America’s Tierra del Fuego and through a perilous strait which he named for himself, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan laid eyes on the expansive South Sea. At the time, the waters were calm and peaceful. He renamed it the Pacific Ocean (from the Latin Mare Pacificum which means “peaceful sea.”) Magellan vastly underestimated the Pacific, thinking he would be able to cross it in a matter of days to reach his goal, the Spice Islands. For most of Magellan’s four month crossing, the waters of the Pacific did little to belie the name he had bestowed upon it. During that crossing, however, Magellan and his men suffered terrible hunger. They ran out of fresh food and were relegated to eating grubs and rats. Unfortunately Magellan did not have the benefit of knowledge we now possess. We now know, for example, that the Pacific covers 32 percent of the world’s total surface and that it separates the countries bordering its western and eastern rims by eight time zones and the International Date Line. Magellan would be amazed that today, a sea crossing by the fastest ship will take a mere two week. There’s no way he…

AlbuquerqueBurgersClosed in 2013Gone But Not ForgottenHot Dogs

Piggy’s Hot Dogs & Hamburgers – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno10:37 PM

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” – William Shakespeare Certainly as a lexicologist, the Bard of Avon should know darned well that what something is named does matter…or maybe not so much.  In Waco, Texas, a burger joint has eschewed politically correctness by calling itself “Fat Ho Burgers.”  Diners line up for as long as an hour for burgers with such culturally sensitive sobriquets as the Supa Fly Ho (a single patty with cheese), a Supa Dupa Fly Ho (two patties with cheese), a Skinny Ho (no pickles and tomato) or a Dried Up Ho (plain meat with cheese).  The restaurant’s inclusiveness is demonstrated with a Tiny Ho burger, the Fat Ho’s kid’s meal. In a February, 2012 example of a restaurant living up to its name, a patron dining at the aptly named Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, Nevada, suffered precisely what the name on the marquee practically promises with meals that feature nearly ten-thousand calories: a heart attack.  The diner was merrily consuming a “Triple Bypass Burger”–one and a half pounds of beef and a dozen slices of bacon when he began complaining of chest…

AlbuquerqueBrunchClosed in 2012Gone But Not ForgottenItalianPizza

Gregorio’s Italian Kitchen – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:12 AM

 “The definitive recipe for any Italian dish has not yet appeared. We are still creating.” Luigi Barzini The categorization and labeling some diners tend to ascribe to Italian restaurants bespeaks not only of strong emotional preferences, but of an unwillingness to assign any merits to the “other side.”  At one side of the spectrum are the old-fashioned “red sauce” restaurants and at the other are Northern Italian restaurants.  To those who love red sauce Italian restaurants, they represent Italian comfort food in a festive and friendly ambiance stereotyped by red and white checkerboard tablecloths and bottles of Chianti at every table.  The menus–often green, white and red–feature familiar American Italian entrees such as spaghetti and meatballs served in profuse portions.  To its proponents, red sauce restaurants are homey, rustic and simple in the best sense of those terms. Detractors usually speak of red sauce restaurants in derogatory and condescending terms.  To its “haters,” red sauce restaurants represent overcooked, mushy pasta dredged in a profligate amounts of tomato sauce “gravy.”  This, they will tell you is low-end food served by Old World restaurants as opposed to the more sophisticated “cuisine” that draws aficionados to Northern Italian restaurants and their nouveau menu…

AlbuquerqueChineseClosed in 2016Gone But Not Forgotten

Hua Chang – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:21 AM

1943’s Best Picture Academy Award winner Casablanca is replete with memorable quotes and scenes. Toward the end of the movie, reluctant hero Rick Blaine helps the beauteous Ilsa Lund and her husband, underground leader Victor Lazlo, escape to Lisbon. In a tearful farewell, Rick tells Ilsa she would regret it if she stayed. “Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.” Having been tipped off to the escape, Major Strasser of the Luftwaffe drives up and tries to prevent it. Rick shoots and kills him. When the police arrive, the opportunistic French police Captain Renault tells them to “round up the usual suspects,” saving Rick’s life. “Round up the usual suspects” seems to be the unintended mantra of Chowhound and similar foodie message boards. Invariably, a list of “anointed” restaurants is repeated ad nauseam whenever a prospective diner asks where to have a meal. The list of anointed restaurants is short and it’s exclusive. It’s hard to break into the list and once a restaurant is on it, it might take an exposé of roach infestations for the restaurant to come off the list. When it comes to Chinese food in Albuquerque, the…

AlbuquerquePizzaSandwich

Pizza 9 – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno7:55 AM

My first review of Pizza 9 was written after my inaugural visit in January, 2009 at its original location in Albuquerque’s International District.  Three years later, there are nine Pizza 9 restaurants strewn throughout Albuquerque and Rio Rancho with a Pizza 9 planned for Santa Fe and “sky’s the limit” growth planned beyond that.  Even before Pizza 9 became a ubiquitous Duke City presence, my review engendered a significant number of visits and comments.  Today, this review is the tenth most frequently launched from among nearly 700 reviews on this blog.  More than 20 comments–some favorable and some almost inflammatory in nature–seem to indicate Pizza 9 evokes passion. What’s in a name?  According to an English bard and playwright of some repute, a rose by any name would smell as sweet.  It would be interesting to conjecture what William Shakespeare would have said about pizza, especially since the label “pizza” has come to mean different things, especially to proponents of two vastly different styles of pizza. In New York City, pizza is practically a religion with nearly than 1700 restaurants in “Metropolis” containing the words “pizza” or “pizzeria” in their name.   “New York style pizza”  has come to mean…

AlbuquerqueAmerican

Marble Brewery – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:21 PM

Marble Brewery  in Albuquerque serves food, but typically through rotating local food trucks and limited snacks rather than a full in-house kitchen.Here are the details on food at their locations: Downtown (111 Marble Ave NW): Features a revolving lineup of local food trucks, including options like Don Choche, Tikka Spice, and Papa Cano’s Pizza. Westside Tap Room: Offers food trucks, with a permanent arrangement with Ironwood Kitchen nearby to provide food.< NE Heights Tap Room: Features food trucks and is located next to a Slice Parlor, allowing guests to bring in pizza.

AlbuquerqueAmericanBreakfastClosed in 2014Gone But Not Forgotten

Roper’s Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:03 AM

Since the early 1980s when I was stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base, every vehicle I’ve owned has seemingly had a built-in auto-pilot with the destination 8810 Central, S.E. hard-coded. For years that was the address of the junior-most of two Albuquerque Milton’s restaurants, a classic American diner which consistently serves some of the very best diner entrees in the city. Milton’s was for me and my barracks-dwelling friends what Monk’s Cafe was to Jerry Seinfeld and his friends and what the Central Perk Coffee House was to the Friends cast. It’s where we commiserated with one another after a stressful day and it was where we celebrated good times. When I returned to New Mexico after three years in England, one of the first destinations on my agenda was that familiar address on Old Route 66.  Instead of friends who were no longer stationed at Kirtland, my dining companion was Kim, my bride of two years.  As with many people who grew up in the “Hog butcher for the world,” (one of several nicknames for Chicago in Carl Sandburg’s 1916 poem “Chicago”), Kim is an unabashed meat and potatoes lover.  The menu, an array of hearty and homespun comfort…