Congrats to a Mom & Pop burger shop who’ve been doing it right for decades: Hurricane’s!

I love that the Disaster Burrito was created after a food critic said their food was a disaster. Great story.

Other recipients: Steve Paternoster of Scalo Northern Italian Grill, Stefan Springer of Chez Axel French Restaurant, and not one but TWO of the employees of The Frontier: Cedar Erickson and Samantha Grande. Nice work, everyone!

Full Awards list here:

New Mexico Restaurant Association 2010 Industry Awards

Part One of my “Good Restaurants” series.

Of course, this can be applied in many cases to all businesses, but since I typically deal with restaurants, I’ll put the focus on them.

GOOGLE YOURSELF – if you like what you see, great. If you don’t, you can some ability to change it. If you don’t see any relevant results AT ALL, start working on it immediately – your survival could depend on it.

If there’s one thing that annoys me about *any* business (and of course, there ain’t one thing, there’s usually lots of things…), it is the inability to EASILY find out hours of operation.

Assuming you have a working phone number and address, when someone calls you, if they don’t hear a live person answering, the very first thing they should hear is, “thank you for calling ZZZ.  Our hours of operation are:  YYY”.  It should be plastered on your front window, on every piece of paper you publish from biz cards to menus.  It should be on your WEBSITE in text (that might be Part Two).   And it should be in your YELP and GOOGLE pages – you as the business owner can control those pages – do so, especially if you don’t have a website.

Good businesses do this, and good luck to the rest….

On my way to the Rodeo Grill and hoping I keep my mitts out of the CRACK CHIPS.

Oh, the shame . . . it’s almost as bad/tempting/delicious as the infamous recipe posted to eGullet years ago under the subject of “Guilty Pleasures”. The awesome-sounding literal mashup included tortilla chips, several taco salad ingredients, and a larger-than-necessary spoon to eat it all with the windowshades drawn. The author called it “Trailer Trash Crap“. Tee hee.

Some day I might attempt such a feat, but for now I’ll content myself with the knowledge that I have polished off the Silverton equivalent: the Mexican Funnel Cake.