Thanks to a few restaurant industry veterans, a new breakfast and lunch spot is now open on Tijeras Avenue near downtown.
Cafe Lush is the creation of owners Tom Docherty and his wife, Sandy Gregory. They’ve spent long hours in local restaurant kitchens and behind the counter at bars in town, but now they’d like to keep in the same industry without having to retire completely.
The menu is, in a nutshell, fresh. Breakfast pizzas and french toast “bread pudding” that sound promising start the day, and lunch moves into sandwiches, savory salads, and more pizzas than you can shake a BBQ Chicken at.
Looking forward to see how Cafe Lush serves the neighborhood!
It’s the summer and we’re thinking of light, healthy foods. To many, that means seafood. But we can’t all have our swordfish and tuna – yes, tuna – and our yellowtail and still leave some for the next generation, or even the next YEAR.
Sustainable Seafood is all about fishing in a way that will keep populations healthy and plentiful for maintenance of both the ecosystem AND your fishy taste buds. At the Biopark’s Aquarium, at 6pm tonight (June 9th), is a bargain of an event – the Rock the Boat Sustainable Seafood Festival. $30 gets you a ticket to stroll around the lush grounds, sampling seafood from restaurants who have taken measures to increase or wholeheartedly embrace their sustainability when it comes to fish.
PLUS, you can sample a wicked cool fish – the lionfish. When you think “invasive species”, you think zebra mussel and kudzu and bark beetle. But if the invasive species is a fish, why not eat it? I agree!
Don’t forget the always-handy Monterey Bay Seafood Watch guide – you can download and print it for your wallet, and it will tell you which fish are good choices in the Southwest, or all over the country. Hint: don’t eat tuna. Seriously.
Just wanted to let everyone know that if you missed hearing the interview on Saturday, it is available to listen online. During it I was visibly outed as a 6’7″ red-headed black woman, which is totally misleading – it’s only 6’2″. Ryan neglected to describe the vivid pattern of my J Lo-esque dress or my deadly 5″ stilettos which contribute quite a bit to the height number. :-)
Thank you for your support of local restaurants, and tune in this Saturday as the guest will be Cheryl Jamison, a prolific cook and author here in our fabulously spicy state.
Los Cuates, one of the stalwarts in our NM food scene, is expanding to a new location in Santa Fe – good for them! They’ll be inside the newly renovated Santa Fe Lodge hotel with a grand opening scheduled for early May. Another local opening will be at the Sunport, taking over the Garduno’s spot after winning the bid over El Pinto. The “Twins” will soon be quadruplets!
Next month was the deadline for a bunch of local restaurants to install really crazy expensive new sprinkler systems, and no one is happy about it – not the restauranteurs nor the city officials who will have to enforce the law, so they granted another 90 day extension to the businesses. I’ll be on the look out for closings over the summer due to small establishments not being able to pony up the $100K to update their systems. Ouch.
Really good restaurants often do well, that’s what I love to see. Here’s my quote of the week: “Recession? What recession?” – Christophe Descarpentries, one of the owners of P’tit Louis Bistro, with one downtown location and another opening up in Nob Hill. Well deserved, guys!
One of the heroes of my early days as a foodie here in Albuquerque is leaving town for family reasons – Chef Sam Etheridge, with a storied history in landmarks like Portabello, Bien Shur, Kanome, Ambrozia, and Nob Hill Bar & Grill had a decade to make you all happy with duck tacos, lobster corndogs, amazing Sunday brunches and the weirdest food innovations this town has seen in years, many of which are now standard menu items at your favorite restaurants. He spent the last several years as a writer for the Local IQ, tending to his cooking and his family. I wish him the best.
Yeah, yeah, I know you can already BUY chocolate and coffee in Albuquerque, but this is the first festival we’ve had to celebrate some of the two more important C words in all of English. Heck, in all of my DIET, too.
It is called the Southwest Chocolate and Coffee FEST, and is going on at the Convention Center this weekend, April 16th and April 17th. I am so crazy bummed because I will be out of town, and missing a potentially cool event. It’s a who’s who of local chocolate and confectionary wizards, personal favorites to new folks I’d love to try out (later), including Chocolate Cartel, Theobroma, ChocolateSmith, Candy Lady, yum!
Here’s what else I am missing, just so you don’t have to:
ABQ Beer Week (ok, it ends on Saturday, so there’s still time!)
Jubilation’s Monthly Wine Tasting – Saturday at 2pm: these are ALWAYS fun and even if I don’t plan to buy wine I usually do, which I suppose is the point.
APRIL is the month to eat cookies and save critters – Flying Star’s annual Animal Humane Center promotion gives a BUCK for every blob of sugary wafer (i.e., cookie) that you buy with the AHNM logo on it. Mmm, sugar.
Lush Life Downtown – Cafe Lush Opens on Tijeras Ave
