AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyItalianNew MexicoPizzaRating: Excellent

Piatanzi – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:40 AM

“Italy is an illusion, indeed, a mirage, the stuff of wishes.” ~Mario Luzi In the 1996 motion picture Big Night, two Italian restaurants across the street from one another operate in diametric opposition to one another both philosophically and in practice. One is enormously successful because it gives customers what they want and expect (even though savvy diners would consider the culinary fare mediocre and uninspired). In the other restaurant, the chef is a perfectionist who will labor all day to create a perfect dish and becomes exasperated when diners don’t recognize the authentic culinary art he creates, preferring “Americanized” Italian food instead. You might think the American dining public would prefer the latter and reject the former. Our inaugural visit to Piatanzi seems to indicate the opposite may be true in Albuquerque. Our route to Piatanzi took us past an Olive Garden where throngs of patrons lined up to get their fill of mediocre Americanized Italian food. When we arrived at Piatanzi, we practically had our choice of seating. The cavernous restaurant was nearly empty on a Saturday at noon. We could only hope this was an anomaly because diners should be beating down the doors to dine at…

AlbuquerqueNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Cervantes Restaurant & Lounge – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno9:35 PM

In 1706, a group of Spanish colonists were granted permission by King Philip of Spain to establish a new villa on the banks and in the valley of the Rio del Norte. The colonists chose a spot “in a place of good fields, waters, pastures, and timber, distant from the villa of Santa Fe about twenty-two leagues.” They named the new settlement La Villa de Alburquerque in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain, Fernandez de la Cueva, Duque de Alburquerque.” A portrait of el Duque de Alburquerque hangs prominently just above the mantle at Cervantes Restaurant & Lounge in the southeast quadrant of the city named for him. Though there is a lot to see throughout the restaurant, the portrait of El Duque is the cynosure to which all eyes are inevitably drawn, a commanding presence with a quiet air of dignity and regal bearing. One wonders what El Duque de Alburquerque would think of the city bearing his name and of the lively cuisine that prompted Livability.com to name that city one of America’s “10 most surprisingly vibrant cities for foodies to flex their taste buds” and for the Huffington Post to declare it “one of the ten…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2017Food Network Eats New MexicoGone But Not ForgottenLatin AmericanNew MexicoRating: OutstandingRestaurant Impossible

Pasion Latin Fusion – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:19 PM

“In my experience, food and passion always intertwine. Passion is food for the soul’s mood at any particular time.” Tammy Mollai Robert Irvine, host of the Food Network’s Restaurant: Impossible show has some nerve! In an episode which first aired in March, 2014, the tough-talking British mesomorph had the audacity to tell America that Pasion Latin Fusion wasn’t the beautiful, graceful swan with which many of us had fallen in love. Although he didn’t directly call Pasion an ugly duckling paddling about aimlessly, Irvine certainly intimated that things at Pasion weren’t as rosy as some of us may have thought. The premise of Restaurant: Impossible is that within two days and on a budget of $10,000, Irvine will transform a failing American restaurant with the goal of helping to restore it to profitability and prominence. To make the show entertaining, any existing dysfunction or drama in the restaurant’s day-to-day operations is spotlighted in the fashion of all reality shows. If you’ve ever been to Pasion Latin Fusion, words like failure, dysfunction and drama won’t ever come to mind. Since its launch in 2011, reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, much moreso than reviews for other “failing” restaurants featured on Restaurant: Impossible.…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyNew MexicanNew MexicoNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Good

Sadie’s Dining Room – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno4:02 AM

Albuquerque and Sadie’s Dining Room have come a long way since 1950. Back then the Duke City’s population was 96,815, up 173% from 1940. Sadie Koury, the oldest child of Lebanese immigrants, was four years away from launching her first Albuquerque restaurant. Located on Second and Osuna, the first Sadie’s was housed in a Lilliputian edifice not much bigger than the restrooms at the Fourth Street restaurant which today bears her name. The Duke City was much more pastoral in the early 50s and Sadie’s restaurant was but a diminutive nine-stool diner on what was then one of the city’s most busy thoroughfares (though not quite as busy as Fourth Street which in 1954, was already seventeen years removed from having been part of historic Route 66). Sadie opened her eponymous eatery for breakfast every morning at 5AM and served lunch late into the afternoon. Standing room only crowds often included truckers who deviated from their Route 66 throughway and who would park their diesel rigs around the tiny edifice. Sadie greeted her customers with a friendly “hi honey” and got to know many of her regulars as well as how they liked their favorite meals prepared. In 1973 after…

AlbuquerqueFrenchNew MexicoRating: Excellent

Le Troquet Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:29 PM

Pope Gregory the Great was a prolific writer canonized as a saint and recognized as a “doctor of the church.” Among musicians, singers, students and teachers, he is revered as a patron saint, a heavenly advocate who intercedes on their behalf. Among gluttons of the Middle Ages, however, the supreme pontiff was reviled. In his treatise Morals on the Book of Job, Pope Gregory essentially condemned them to Hell, a denouncement reflecting the strict austerity of the times. For gluttons, the unpardonable sin was in deriving too much pleasure from eating. Eating, or more precisely the pleasurable overindulgence in food, was viewed as an ungodly preoccupation with temporal and corporeal pleasures at the expense of spirituality. Church leaders of the Middle Ages didn’t just denounce the derivation of pleasure from eating in a general sense. They listed five specific ways in which gluttony was a sin: eating too soon, eating too expensively, eating too much, eating too eagerly, eating too daintily and eating wildly. By Middle Age standards, many Americans are gluttons and would be condemned to an eternity in Hell for our enjoyment of food. Fortunately the provincial dogma regarding the enjoyment of food has been replaced by more…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBar & GrillClosed in 2019Gone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico

Bosque Brewing Company – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:38 PM

NOTE: The Bosque Brewing Company has six locations including two in Las Cruces and one in Bernalillo.  Only the location in San Mateo reviewed here has closed. In 1978, the number of breweries across the fruited plain had fallen to an all-time, post-Prohibition low of 89. That year President Jimmy Carter signed into law, a bill that legalized home brewing on a national level. Since the craft brewing market began to pick up steam in the mid- to late-1980s there has been no surcease in sight. Today, there are more than 2,500 breweries operating across the United States with another 1,500 breweries in the planning stage. According to the Brewers Association, as of 2013 the craft beer industry experienced double-digit growth four straight years in both dollar sales and volume. So what accounts for such growth in popularity of local beer? Experts theorize that similar to the locavore trend in the culinary world, cervisaphiles (aficionados of beers and ales) have grown tired of being subjected to industrially brewed swill (anyone remember the “skunky” beer commercials?) and have discovered the pleasures of carefully crafted beer flavors made under the same roof where it’s consumed. A similar evolution among consumers also transpired…

AlbuquerqueRating: GoodSandwich

DG’s Deli – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:23 PM

“There are sandwich shops in New York which offer the nobility and gentry a choice of no less than 100 different sandwiches, all of them alluring and some of them downright masterpieces.” H.L. Mencken In conversations with trusted gastronomes about what the Albuquerque area dining scene is most direly lacking, it’s not Basque cuisine, Russian food, Low-Country cooking or the food of any other race or ethnicity that’s most often mentioned. Surprisingly, what my esteemed colleagues believe is most desperately needed in the Duke City is a big city deli–and not just any kind of deli. My colleagues lament the absence of a true Kosher-style deli, the type of which were born in the Jewish enclaves of New York City in the 1930s. While the short-lived Nosh Jewish Delicatessen & Bakery quelled some of those longings, it still wasn’t the quintessential kosher deli my urban sophisticate colleagues wanted. Kosher-style delis are not true practitioners of traditional Kosher dietary laws, meaning the food they produce is not deemed “fit” for consumption by Jews in accordance with standards for cleanliness, spotlessness and for being “intact.” As an example, Kosher practices forbid the consumption of meat and milk together while Kosher-style delis break…

BakeryBrunchFrenchNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)Santa Fe

Chez Mamou – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Gil Garduno5:00 PM

When she asked me to repeat the name of the French restaurant where we were dining one slightly breezy Sunday morning, I knew my clever bride had something in mind. Relaying that we were dining at Chez (pronounced “shay”) Mamou, she retorted “are you sure it’s not called “Shame on you.” That was her reaction to a server having deposited a stale, probably older than day-old baguette on our table. She followed up with “no self-respecting French restaurant, especially one claiming to be a bakery would serve bread baked by Napoleon’s baker.” Whether or not the fossilized (her term) bread was indicative of Chez Mamou’s daily performance, it was enough to rile my usually saintly patient wife. By this point, she had already dissed the coffee, an Allegro Coffee blend, which she found entirely too strong and “more bitter than supporters of England wanting to remain in the European Union.” (In the interest of full-disclosure, she finds coffee too strong if it can’t be “cured” by five or six packets of Splenda.”) She would later repeat her “what’s the name of this restaurant” comment while eating some of the restaurant’s highly-touted pastries and croissants, reputedly baked by a master baker…

Announcements

Friends of Gil (FOG) IX: Where do YOU want to Eat? Cast Your Vote Now!

Gil Garduno8:34 PM

OK FOGEYS. It’s voting time. By Jim Millington We have prepared a list of widely disparate restaurants as worthy candidates for FOG IX in July. In an exercise of Democracy not controlled by special interest groups, you have the opportunity to vote for the restaurant in which you’d like to dine with the Friends of Gil. This being New Mexico, we ask that farm animals and dead relatives not vote. 1. Piatanzi on Juan Tabo has a back room for groups. The food is unique in Albuquerque and wonderful if you like it and not wonderful if you don’t. A disadvantage is that it can get expensive if you aren’t paying attention. 2. Nexus is a Brewpub which is probably better noted for its New Mexicanized (my own made up word) Cajun food than beer (nothing wrong with the beer). 3. El Patron is a very popular New Mexican restaurant with plenty of room and barrel-sized margaritas. 4. Vick’s Vittles is something of a Country Texas/New Mexican cafe with such goodies as healthy high nutrition Chicken Fried Steak, Broasted Chicken and Burritos. You can exercise your voting rights by responding to this post by midnight, June 30.

AlbuquerqueBurgersNew MexicoNew Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2009New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail: 2011Rating: Very Good

Laguna Burger (66 Pit Stop) – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno8:31 AM

In 2016 and 2017 my review of the Laguna Burger was the most frequently visited post on Gil’s Thrilling…  In 2015 and 2014, only one restaurant (Down N’ Dirty Seafood Boil) received more blog visits than Laguna Burger.  If even a small number of the visitors to the review actually also visited the restaurant, that’s thousands of visitors to Laguna Burger.  It’s probably safe to assume hundreds of thousands of visitors who haven’t read Gil’s Thrilling review have made their way to one of the four Laguna Burger locations, three of which are definitely off-the-beaten path.  In November, 2017, Laguna Burger established a presence at a 3,000 square-foot space on Avanyu Plaza on 12th Street near the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.  You can read my review of the 12th Street location here. The history of New Mexico is fraught with tales of hardship and peril. Enchanting as it may be, New Mexico is a land which can be harsh and unforgiving as early settlers found out when, amidst the ravages of climatic extremes, they traversed austere terrain in search of wealth and a better life. There were no interstate highways nor high-speed motorized conveyances to ferry them across…

AlbuquerqueKoreanRating: Excellent

Arirang Oriental Market – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno5:01 PM

“Cuisine is the tactile connection we have to breathing history. History and culture offer us a vibrant living society that we taste through cuisine. All cuisine is a reflection of the society from which it emanates … in the end cuisine is the result of culture” – Clifford Wright If cuisine is the result of culture, then it can certainly be stated that music is the expressive language of that culture. Well before the advent of the written word, music was used to tell stories, impart wisdom, express ideas, share emotions and convey the history and culture of the civilization. Until the 20th century and the rapid cultural changes wrought by the postmodern period, music also bridged the generations. Family members of every generation typically listened to the same music. In Korea, there may be no song as beloved–even in North Korea–as Arirang, an iconic folk song often considered an unofficial national anthem. Its plaintiff lyrics convey a traveler’s agony and anguish while crossing a mountain pass named Arirang with a heartfelt longing to return home. After its service in Korea during the Korean War, the South Korean government designated Arirang as the official march of the United States Army’s…