FIRST, do not forget that this weekend is the Fiery Foods Festival at the Sandia Resort & Casino. More Scoville units than you can shake a tall glass of milk at and all the outstanding vendors that make hot stuff!

For the show, local favorites El Pinto have created the WORLD’S HOTTEST SALSA. Even CNN got in on the reporting of this story.

Ha. We’ll see about that.

Next, in the space formerly occupied by Delicia’s Diner (where I had some darn good tamales a few years ago), there will be Jamon’s Frybread Cabana – this sounds really interesting. Chef James Trujillo, formerly of the restaurant at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, is going to offer Frybread, of course, but also “Brasilian Street Food”. His heritage just couldn’t be contained any longer and I’ll tell ya, this is awesome news.

The children are our future…chefs! At the end of March (the 28th), the New Mexico Restaurant organization will be putting on a competition for high school culinary wizards where they compete for huge scholarships and the chance to compete nationally. The ProStart Invitational looks for excellence in cooking and restaurant management. Cooking skills = life skills, regardless your future career.

Apparently we don’t grow enough of our own chile here…. that’s a shame. “The New Mexico Chile Association said countries like China are trying to corner some chile markets. Currently, imports account for 82 percent of the U.S. consumption of chile, officials said.”

El Pinto gets vote as best New Mexican restaurant. That is, by New Mexico magazine. Pretty durn cool.

And….. after a much hyped waiting period, the former Bumble Bee’s Baja Grill has been taken over by yet another set of Santa Feans and again as a Mexican joint with tacos and such. It’s owned by Mark Kiffin of The Compound. The Compound. That’s serious cred.  I hope that Zacatecas Tacos & Tequila does ok, in the end. The talent is certainly there, but is the execution?  (And that “Z” looks a little too much like the Getrude Zachary Z…. or is that just me?)

Consider a new Urbanspoon user. Why are they there? Often it is because they have signed up for an account in the heat of the moment – ANGER or ELATION about a restaurant. Many signup from mobile devices, even while they are at the restaurant, lobbing comments about the overall experience without the details that lead to their conclusion.

Based on observation rather than rigorous data collection, most wildly negative or wildly positive reviews are left by users that will never review again. But what builds credibility as a reviewer? EXPERIENCE. And not just general eating experience, but experience sharing one’s opinions with the world in appropriate detail. A review that simply says, “this is great” or “this sucks” is useless. In that case the “reviewer” should just mark the place as “I like” or “I don’t like” and be done with it.

Keep that in mind when you see things like this (one negative, one positive):

 
Then, do everyone a service and mark their review as “not helpful”. We all appreciate it and the quality and reliability of websites like Urbanspoon and Yelp can get better.

According to their website and press info, Cafe Bella will feature locally-roasted beans (from where? I’ll find out!). But that’s not what interests me.  What interests me is that the owner, Michael Gonzales, will be pulling shots on a crazy expensive Italian espresso machine, and also that he was trained by the Italian World Cup champion barista while they both lived in Seattle.

Will Guiseppe’s be feeling some competition? I hope so. This metro area is far large enough to support several excellent espresso shops.
The cafe side of things will be featuring as much locally grown produce as possible, working with farms and small businesses to get the kitchen’s raw ingredients.

So, it all sounds good – I’ll haul myself up the hill and check the place out, and probably post photos to Twitter, too: @dukecityfood

Café Bella Coffee

2115 Golf Course Road S.E. #102 in Rio Rancho

http://www.cafebellacoffee.com

….. but I do.  Let’s round up some of the latest restaurant gossip, shall we?

Firstly, I did not know that former co-founder of Relish was Chef de Cuisine at Artichoke Cafe. Go, Tony Nethery!

Next, Nob Hill is abuzz with openings, closings, and speculation. A new spot should be coming in where Bumble Bee’s was – called Z, and owned by the Street Food Asia folks. And, Andre’s quietly closed. Did anyone even eat there, aside from the one horrible Urbanspoon review?

And mentions do pop up about people that eat here and love it, like this one about Perea’s.

Here’s my issue:  They’ve been open ONE WEEK.  Urbanspoon already has 4 reviews both great and bad.  Give it some time, folks . . . even experienced restauranteurs need time to get things flowing.  Go visit, take notes, wait, go back, think about it…. and then post a review.

Thanks.

P.S. I’m not saying that Gregorio’s is getting any different treatment than most new and hyped joints in town, but this one happened so quickly that I wanted to object in public to the general practice of lobbing critique at brand new restaurants.

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

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?

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!

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.