I celebrated my 50th birthday in New Mexico this year, and because I’d read through so many posts here to put together a list of possible restaurants to check out, I wanted to repay that by posting my experiences. The headline is that the trip, the food, and the folks were all fantastic.
I’d been to New Mexico twice before, both when I was 18 and traveling around the country the summer before college, and had spent about a month in Denver that same summer. Despite that, I was wholly unprepared for altitude sickness. Even in Albuquerque it hit me a little (though not full force until we took the Sandia Peak Tramway), and in Santa Fe it was pronounced. I wish I’d discovered a few days earlier that canned oxygen almost completely took care of it, but now I know for next time.
We didn’t get to do everything we would’ve liked to, partly because there’s just never enough time, partly because altitude sickness killed my appetite, and partly because not only could we not find parking at Mary and Tito’s, when we parked nearby and tried to walk there, the light never changed to let us cross the street (seriously! we waited 15 minutes).
We started in Albuquerque, where our first meal was down the street from our hotel, at the 505 Central Food Hall. I wasn’t expecting this to be noteworthy – we’d just gotten off the plane, picked up the car, and checked in, and just wanted something to eat after a long day that had started with an early morning flight out of New Hampshire. But the green chile cheeseburger at Stackers and the green chile and pepperoni Detroit-style pizza at Thicc were excellent. I wish we’d had time to go back in a more normal frame of mind, because I’m aware, maybe I was just that hungry, maybe that’s why the burger was so good, but … even if it was just because of the context, this was the best restaurant burger I’d had in several years. I have no idea how it stacks up against the state’s best, but if it’s not one of the better green chile cheeseburgers, you folks are blessed.
The pizza was great too, but we kept talking about the burger.
The next day we went to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, which was really interesting, and ate at the restaurant there. I liked the fried Kool Aid pickles—despite living in New Hampshire now, I lived in Louisiana for years and have a lot of family throughout the south, so I am familiar with Kool Aid pickles—but with only two people, we barely put a dent in them … because look at the size of my wife’s Indian taco.
I got the vegetable stew, red chile posole, and green chile, and a piece of cherry Pueblo pie. Great stuff, but the red chile posole was overwhelmingly my favorite.
That night we tried out Ex Novo Brewing Company. It was probably the low point of the trip. The food was pretty good—the carne adovada eggrolls were excellent—but the service was incredibly slow and brusque. They must have been understaffed: it was a Thursday evening and half the tables were empty, but everyone seemed rushed (a server dropped a plate at our table without pausing while jogging by, but forgot to leave silverware with it) and our check beat some of the food to the table. Don’t get me wrong: this being the low point of the trip is a testament to how good the rest was.
The day we went up to Sandia Peak, we started with lunch at New Mexico Beef Jerky Company. I mentioned this above: we tried to go to Mary and Tito’s but couldn’t find a parking spot anywhere nearby, so wound up here, at my “second choice.” Well Jesus, if Mary and Tito’s is better than this, I don’t know if I could handle it. This burrito defeated me. I was originally going to get a more reasonable burrito for a middle-aged man, but they were out of chicharrones as a side, so if I wanted to try them, my only option was in a burrito. So into a burrito they went, with potatoes and red and green chile, smothered with more chile.
It was amazing.
I still talk about this burrito. It’s annoying how much I talk about it.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Texas, mainly around San Antonio. I have my favorites there. Restaurants I’ve been to twenty or thirty times. And I remember how good the Mexican food was there the first time I tried it—or for that matter, how good the green chile stew was the first time I went to New Mexico, 32 years ago, or the enchiladas I had somewhere outside of Denver that were the first Mexican food I had that wasn’t Old El Paso—but this was just … a triumph. I still don’t understand how something is this flavorful and complex with this few ingredients.
I barely finished half of it.
A brief side note, since this was the day we went up to Sandia Peak: New Mexico is a joy to drive in. The mountains are beautiful of course, but you also have a dearth of assholes, frankly, at least compared to the greater Boston area or New Orleans—which in the former case is, perhaps, like saying you’re pretty dry compared to the middle of the ocean. But still. We certainly encountered a few dipshits, but there wasn’t the kind of ambient assholery that makes driving so stressful the way it does up here.
That night we had drinks at Founders. The drinks were great, the staff was great, I did feel a little old that the customers seemed to be universally 10 to 15 years younger than me and the music reflected it, but what better time than your 50th birthday to get used to that kind of thing. Our favorite cocktail bar up here went out of business during COVID, and Founders had a very similar vibe to it in some ways.
I also appreciate the local lizards. When I lived in New Orleans there were a lot of neighborhood lizards, including one who used to hang out on the stairs just outside my door and was nearly always there when I came home. Up here in New England you get the occasional newt if you go out into the woods, that’s about it. Good to see lizards!
Our hotel was across the street from the Albuquerque farmers market, it turns out, which was held the morning we were checking out to drive to Santa Fe. So we shopped around there, got the best limeade I’ve ever had, some really great green chile cheese lumpia (Barkada’s, I think?), that kind of thing, and then it was off to the Turquoise Trail.
There’s a great little place along the way where we can get cheeseburgers, I said! It’s in a little town called Madrid, I said!
Well. It turns out a lot of other people had already heard of the Mine Shaft Tavern. Turns out a lot of people were headed there too. We did not, in fact, stop for cheeseburgers. That’s all right. It was a beautiful drive.
Once we got settled in at our place in Santa Fe (temporarily, it turned out: our Airbnb had mice who got into our snacks and pooped in our luggage while we were at dinner, and we resettled at the Inn of the Governors), we went to Casa Chimayo before catching Wayne’s World at the Jean Cocteau theater. I ordered the chile en nogada, a dish I was familiar with from cooking magazines and whatnot, and from having tried to make it once in my 20s. I don’t know how this version stacks up to others, but I can say it was delicious. Sweet but not too sweet. The beans on the side were not as dry as they look in this photo.
The morning of my actual birthday, we got doughnuts and coffee at a food truck called Donut Vision that I’d seen people mention on Facebook. Really good doughnuts are probably my favorite sweet treat, and man were these really good doughnuts. The owners are Cambodian American, which I mention because my favorite doughnut place up here is also run by Cambodians, so maybe it’s not a coincidence? We each got two doughnuts and a coffee—mine was a corn latte made with corn milk (corn steeped in milk and strained) and cajeta, something I recreated at home several times once corn season started. The doughnut is a yeast-raised doughnut with a yuzu glaze and honeycomb candy. So flavorful, and I love the honeycomb texture on top of the soft doughnut. I kept talking about this place to random people at the spa. Sorry about that if you were there. (Other doughnuts, not pictured: a tamarind apple fritter and a mango lassi doughnut.)
Because I’m old and tired, the next stop was a hot tub at Ten Thousand Waves, and although the altitude was really affecting me at this point—I didn’t discover the canned oxygen solution until that evening, and don’t even really remember lunch—the hot tub resulted in my first day with zero knee pain in God knows how many years. I injured it when I was 18—same summer as my previous visit to New Mexico, actually; I was in Kansas City during the Mississippi River floods, and couldn’t tell the sidewalk ended because it was underwater—and it’s been a constant low-grade discomfort since my 30s, like knee tinnitus.
The next day we went to the Santa Fe Botanical Garden—a real highlight, that was a fantastic thing for someone coming from such a different part of the country—and then had lunch at Plaza Cafe Southside. I thought the green chile cheeseburger at Plaza Cafe was only okay, to be honest—maybe one reason it wasn’t as good as Stackers was because the underlying burger itself was nondescript—and it needed salt, and I almost never add salt at restaurants. But the coconut cream pie … oh my God. Even the crust is coconut. Jesus Christ, what a pie. The best coconut cream pie I’ve had. Don’t tell my grandmother I said that.
The meal that I’m sure is the least exciting to you: Rudy’s barbecue. Listen. Look. Like I said, I live in New England. And when I lived in New Orleans … that city sucked for barbecue. I love it more than anywhere in the world, but if you want barbecue, Chinese food, or Mexican food, you better be ready for a road trip. So most of the good barbecue I’ve had was in Texas, and there’s a Rudy’s everywhere in Texas. That brisket, that sauce, some hot sauce on top? That was nostalgic for me.
The next day we drove back to Albuquerque for our last night, and stayed at the Hilton before flying out. Dinner was in the (newly renovated, I think?) in-house restaurant, and while the photos aren’t very exciting, the steak (with red and green chiles and numerous accompaniments) was very good, the clarified pina colada was fun, and the desserts (churros with peanut butter ice cream, biscochito parfait) were rich to the point of being a little overwhelming. In a good way, if I hadn’t just had a huge steak.
My only regret is that I never saw a roadrunner, but I’d seen them numerous times on the previous trip, so it’s all right. Hell of a birthday, so thanks again.
