NM Gourmet Tour 1978
The New Mexico Gourmet Tour was a hand made map showing restaurants I liked throughout the state. I would make copies of this map and give them to friends or fellow office workers from El Paso who were planning to visit the Land of Enchantment. The list of restaurants came from several years worth of traveling and eating in various restaurants.
The possible routes my friends would take began with a choice of the Interstate highway going to Las Cruces or the two lane road to Alamogordo. Although my destination was usually the Alamogordo and Cloudcroft area, media reports had steered me away from eating at Mc Donalds there. Dr. Bernard Rosenblum, head of the El Paso City-County Health Department, had gotten sick from the McDonald’s in the southern part of Alamogordo. I added my weekend exploration of areas such as the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) to just present a general warning about the area between I-25 and US 54 in New Mexico. Of course my friends knew this was a joke, although there was no joking around about my restaurant recommendations.
La Posta and Nellie’s in Las Cruces were places my relatives liked, and I found out my taste buds worked the same way as theirs. K-Bob’s at the time was a pretty good steak house.
In Socorro there was pretty good Chinese food at the Vagabond Restaurant. On a later “tour” I added the Owl Bar & Cafe in San Antonio–my first experience with green chile cheeseburgers.
Albuquerque seemed to be the only city in the state where I could stay several days yet could not come up with a good list of restaurants to recommend. El Modelo (a really good one) had excellent stuffed sopaipillas which I brought home and put in the freezer.
At Jemez I found freshly made Indian fry bread and it was excellent. I suspect it may still be available. I think I got mine from a street vendor.
The center of gourmet eating was Santa Fe then as it is now.. Of course many of my selections are anything but gourmet, but the State Capital did have some choices that just about anyone could afford. La Tertulia was probably the best New Mexican restaurant of all time for me. It closed, but the grandkids of the owners have now opened La Tertulia in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tomasita’s is now where Santa Fe Station used to be. I don’t know how I found Adobe Restaurant but it must have been good.
I will never forget the Rio Grande Cafe in Española that had probably the hottest chile I have ever tasted (I’m pretty sure it was the green). One of my roommates at the University of Texas was from Los Alamos and recommended it. I thanked him when I got back. My revised map listed Matilda’s in Española as my choice after Rio Grande Cafe closed.
After I made this map I found out that the Mexican restaurant in Alamogordo was called La Fiesta. I don’t remember it or Lester’s Cafeteria now.
El Toro in Tucumcari was a genuinely good restaurant in a city where other restaurants can’t seem to decide whether they want to tone down their food by making it Tex-Mex or a pale imitation of New Mexican cuisine.
Most of these restaurants are now classics (closed for more than ten years). I am pretty sure, though, that the McDonald’s in Alamogordo is still open.