I’m a week late, not to mention a dollar short, but you NEED to know that a local radio station has started up a weekly segment where the goal is to promote local restaurants and entice listeners to give up their chain habits and forever avoid places like the Olive Chili Outback Corral kind of spots.

This Saturday will be another live show with at least one featured guest, and yeah, this weekend it IS yours truly:  http://breakthechain.info/

Here’s the press copy from the parent radio station:

“If your loyalties lie with local restaurants – those owned and operated by our friends and neighbors, you’ll love “Break the Chain,” an enlightening and entertaining new radio program hosted by Ryan Scott. Break The Chain premiered on Saturday, May 14th at 3PM on 1550 KIVA AM and www.1550kiva.com. This weekly radio show will feature locally owned and operated restaurants here in New Mexico.

Obviously Break The Chain isn’t about breaking or bankrupting heavily bankrolled chain restaurants. It’s about breaking the chain “habit,” the inclination many have to visit the ubiquitous and convenient chains. Break The Chain is a celebration of local mom-and-pop restaurants, aiming to show the many outstanding alternatives to the familiar chains. It’s an interactive show in which you can call in and express your opinions and share your experiences. Most of all, it’s a fun and lively show you will love.”

Love lamb?  Love all kinds of game meat, gently prepared and exuberantly strong flavored? I was reading the newest copy of New Mexico Magazine today and lit upon a description of a wildly simple entree at a little spot called Atrisco Cafe – leg of lamb burrito with red chile.  Kate Manchester‘s description was evocative enough that we literally scrambled to the car and went up for a late lunch, calling ahead to make sure this now-famous item was still available.

At Atrisco Cafe I had the pleasure of tasting their piece de resistance – a burrito stuffed with roasted leg of lamb from a heritage farm in New Mexico.  Lest you think this is ONLY about Santa Fe – the cafe has history.  George Gundrey opened the spot after generations of family restaurants, including a place at Atrisco & Central in Albuquerque called the Central Cafe, in operation from the 1940′s until the 1970′s.  The whole extended family has their chile-scrubbing hands in places like Horseman’s Haven and Tia Sophia’s – not bad for a story.

The burrito?  It’s really, really, lamby.  And that’s it.  No beans, no garnish.  Even the cheese is gently applied.  It is a good example of why I don’t often order lamb – for my tastes I find many lamb dishes too mild, too toned-down-for-beef-eaters.  But this, this grabbed you by the tongue and said, “hello.  I’m game meat.  How are you today?”

You can revel in that flavor but it does get overwhelming – a friend of mine suggested it was lacking something but we were not sure what.  Maybe calabacitas, maybe some beans, something with a little neutrality.  But if you want to be smacked in the head with your leg of lamb, it’s perfect.

Oh, and their red chile is pretty darn good, too.

Just a few tidbits for y’all.

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.

I Love Sushi has been on the “short list” of favorite Albuquerque sushi joints for years. They are friendly, easy to find, and the sushi is both decent-to-good and inexpensive.

Even the Alibi has been showering the love on them recently, which made me think I need to get back there for some house-cured saba. Yum.

Visiting their website I noticed it was vastly different than before, and upon first look it is pretty. Clean and brightly colored with menu navigation peppered throughout the flowering branches.

BUT. It is flash.  Complete with things that spin and optional sound effects.  Ick.  Truly pretty on the surface with all the depth of a mirage, unfortunately.

What does that mean? It means there is virtually no TEXT on the website. This is death for anyone needing to pull up the site on a smartphone or computer with slow internet. It also means searching for the site online could be dicey, as the search engines tend to utilize text content when building their pool of information.  This could be bad for SEO and people just being able to find the restaurant at all.

I recommend, for their sake, at least one of these changes:

1. Put the address and phone number in plain text on every single page.
2. Keep the same pretty scheme, but lose the flash in favor of a text-based navigation system, including the contents of the menu.

Just called Noda’s Japanese Cuisine to see about some post New Year raw fish and heard a voice message telling me they were closing “for relocation” as of December 18th.

Wha….?

No more info was given, and a “thanks for your patronage” closing made me very, very worried.

Noda’s is one of those restaurants I talk up quite a bit and visit far less often than I’d like. I hope that my inaction is not a contributor to their current woes. Or that this is all just worrying in vain and they have a huge shiny new space on the ready to welcome old and new eaters alike.