Hot dogs and burgers are recession food, so they say. Personally it seems more reasonable to me that true recession food would be beans and rice, or stew, or casseroles, or beans and beans and beans. Or maybe that’s depression food. Anyway . . .

If you have been missing Bob’s Fish n’ Chips near downtown, you still won’t be able to get the old school divey experience at 700 Central SE because it is now owned by a couple of chefs with experience at high-end joints in Santa Fe. What are they doing to the old place? Making burgers out of grass-fed beef, that’s what. Owner Chris Medina is calling the place “Holy Cow” and hopes to compete with the likes of BrGr, Standard Diner, and a host of others.

This is obviously a trend, whether or not it has anything to do with the recession. I applaud the increasing use of grass-fed beef, especially for “fatty” applications like burgers where you want the moisture but not all the icky hormonal junk that usually tags along in factory-farmed cattle meat. True grass-fed AND grass-finished beef’s fat is as good for you as salmon fat. Neato, eh? While Holy Cow’s grass-fed is probably grain-finished, it’s still a good start.

Open daily lunch through late with weekend breakfasts (maybe); 505-242-2991

Today is National Hot Fudge Sundae Day.  The day to celebrate the meeting of gooey chewy fudge on top of melty vanilla ice cream.  (It’s also the day that bread rationing ended in Britain in 1948, but hey, tomorrow is Bagelmania day so you can get your chewy gluten fix going then, and nowadays we’ve got freakin’ ice cream!!!) How perfect is that with the crazy triple-digit temperatures, eh?

Go have yourself a wonderful huge hot fudge sundae.  Or just a little one.  Or even a teeny weeny sundae, like this cute little button here in Albuquerque at Route 66 Diner on Central.

No matter how much of a food snob you think I am (and I probably am that, too), I love veggies.  Raw veggies, cooked veggies, big honkin’ piles of them.  I used to adore The Salad Bowl up on San Mateo but they didn’t last.

One of my other favorite lunches in the UNM/EDo/Downtown area was Souper Salad near University on Central.  The same folks worked there for years, only a few managers came and went, and generally it was a reliable place to chow down on the healthier components of my daily consumption.

Alas, a customer recently reported to the health department that they found a blade in one of the food bins – likely from a peeler, one of those little guys – and it took about 24 hours for the place to be practically boarded up.  THAT sounds fishy to me.  Yes that is no small offense, BUT in the grand scheme of things a single blade in the shredded carrots is frankly far less of the public health risk than other easily overlooked things like employees not washing their hands or not keeping food at the correct temperatures.  At least a blade is right out there saying, “hello!  I don’t belong here!”.  Bacteria don’t do that.  But in this case that blade allowed the inspectors to find those other violations I mentioned above – so perhaps the blade did some good.

Anyway, I still kind of wonder if anything else was going on – were there financial troubles?  Managerial woes?  It seems that a “for rent” sign up the next day is a bit extreme.  Anyone know?

The woefully empty building at Carlisle and Central might actually be opening up for a new business – the newest offshoot of Chow’s Asian Cuisine called Fan Tang.  Fresh food, tried and true recipes from Chow’s, and reasonable prices are the goal, says the owner.

The open date was set for early July, but no word yet on the status.  Even the website is an empty shell with no real information.

So, what’s up?  Anyone have some additional details on this new competition for StreetFood Asia?

Nurturing writing talent seems to be a habit at the Alibi – Jason Sheehan launched from there to James Beard Award stardom over at Denver’s Westword.

Now, Ari LeVeaux had several of his stories submitted and was nominated for a Food Writing award at the AltWeekly annual contest. He’s nominated in the under 50,000 circulation category. In the over 50,000 group you have to content with the likes of Jonathan Gold, and that ain’t happening.

Good luck, Ari!