New Mexico eaters make the point that the state’s cuisine is NOT Mexican, Tex-Mex, or California-Mex. It may have glimmers of them all, but it has a personality all its own. Chile – spelled with an “E” to honor the official state co-vegetable (along with the pinto bean) – rules in the Land of Enchantment, but it is rare to find chili, spelled with an “i,”as a meal. Chilies define the great state version of a hamburger, the green chile cheeseburger, and restaurants everywhere serve chilies rellenos (cheese-stuffed pods), and carne adovada (chile-marinated roast pork). Chilies infuse bread loaves and pizza crusts, ignite huevos rancheros, and are used to add snap and sunshiny flavor to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Beyond the ubiquitous pod, nearly every New Mexico table has a basket of sopaipillas – airy little warm pillows of quick-fried dough, brought to perfection by a drizzle of honey. Frito pies are another state signature dish. In fact, Santa Fe is one of two places that claim to have invented it (the other place being Dallas, Texas). It is today a southwestern-accented dish found in diners and cafes far beyond state borders.
In 1901, there were fewer than 7,000 cars on America’s roads. Just 40 years later, Duncan Hines’s guidebook Adventures in Good Eating was pinpointing hundreds of gems worthy of a detour....
Our PIP2s are just fine, which is a good thing because the PIP2-impaired are in for trouble if they try to eat their way along the Rio Grande through...
For two-lane travelers, pulling into a parking lot perfumed by hamburgers and hot onion rings is as satisfying as any four-star dining experience. At a true classic drive-in, you...
Santa fe boasts more than 200 restaurants. It’s an impressive number for such a small municipality, but what makes “The City Different” really different is the quality of food...
Route 66 never had an official name like the Ozark Trail or the Merritt Parkway. Mapped out in 1926 as a federal highway that would run diagonally, rather than...
Pancakes make people happy. Arriving at the table in the form of short stacks or lofty towers, or fanned out like a haul of soft gold medallions, they are...
As pilgrims on the road of reprobate gastronomy, we encounter all sorts of green chile cheeseburgers (henceforth referred to as GCCBs) at drive-ins and truck-stops throughout the Southwest. But...
In West Texas and New Mexico, chiles are a way of life. Long green ones soak up the sun in the summer and ripen in the fall, and fiery...
The vendor wars have ended in Santa Fe. Calm reigns on the Plaza, where, seven years ago, the lady with the churros wagon so resented the competition from Speedy...
Road trip through New Mexico Take a road trip and eat your way through El Camino Real "The Royal Road" through New Mexico. In addition to spectacular natural beauty, you...
What a yummy trip it is to eat one's way from Chicago to L.A. along old Route 66! This tour of 21 excellent stops along the way includes some...
The drive along old Route 66 from the Texas Panhandle to the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico is a pageant of natural splendor and...
A visit to New Mexico during the height of chile season takes us from Albuquerque, where the State Fair is underway, north to magical city of Santa Fe, then...
Is there another dish as diverse as pizza? It can be an utterly simple tomato pie – nothing but sauce on crust – or it can be a multi-meat...
Route 66 did not bypass cities. It ran straight through their hearts. Route 66 through Albuquerque is a prime example. Here, the highway goes right past some of our...
As breathtaking as a western sunset is, western breakfast can be every bit as beautiful. Sunrise never tasted better than it does at any one of these dozen breakfast...
Burgers in the Open Air Hamburgers are good year-round, but there’s special pleasure in having one en plein air on a summer day. Check out these baker’s-dozen Roadfood favorite restaurants serving the...
Hangover BeGone Other than drinking more or not drinking at all, the way to banish hangovers is to spoon up some menudo. Made from tripe with a large charge of...
North and Northwest With famously good restaurants serving local and exotic meals, Santa Fe is such a powerful magnet for the appetite that it can be hard to leave. But...
Unique Regional Dishes After 40 years and 5 million miles spent on the road looking for America's best regional food, we've assembled a list of the quintessential, must-eat food in...
Santa Fe's bounty of good food merits at least a week of eating ... or two or three weeks, or more. But let's say you have just one day...
The Mesilla Valley in southern New Mexico is chile central, where the best are grown and where the hot pod is enjoyed at every meal. If you want to...
Why is brunch so wonderful? One, it almost always includes adult beverages. Two, it's far more bountiful than either breakfast or lunch. Three, there's no hurry to eat it:...
There are few pleasures in life more sensuously delicious than sinking teeth into a perfectly ripe peach to let its juicy, sugared sunshine flood over taste buds. Because their...
"Drive-in" has come to mean just about any cheap-eats restaurant with car-friendly parking. A genuine drive-in is a place where customers park and are waited on and eat in...
Chili is like DNA: everybody's is different. Texans claim (rightfully) that history proves theirs to be the first. Or at least they were the first to make a big...
To quench ferocious thirst (non-alcoholically), few beverages are as welcome as horchata. A rice milk that varies from saki-thin to milk shake-thick, served on ice and dusted with cinnamon,...
We Americans love our hamburgers, at home and on the road. From mischievous fried sliders to majestic beef pillows oozing juice over coals, burgers are a birthright coast to...
Huevos Rancheros, which means ranch-style eggs, once was an exotic dish that U.S. travelers found only in the southern border-state cafes. With the burgeoning popularity of Mexican food --...
Fritos were created in San Antonio in 1932, but it took some thirty years before the Frito pie was born. Teresa Hernandez, working behind the Woolworth's lunch counter in...
Granola first was invented in the 1860s (not the 1960s) and eaten by health nuts of the day. It was a severe dish made from nothing but double-baked sheets...
Sopaipillas are are made from dough that is rolled out very thin, cut into small sections, then tossed into boiling oil, preferably lard. The lard makes the pieces of...
At their best, made from roasted chilies that still have muscular vegetable walls, stuffed with cream-rich molten cheese and haloed in a coat of featherweight batter fried to a...
Although it isn't shaped like one, this is our kind of food pyramid, containing protein in the form of meat and cheese, vegetables (green chile and maybe onions, too),...
