Various restaurants are particularly important or memorable for me, so I thought I'd write about them. Whether or not a particular place makes a lasting impression on me is somewhat idiosyncratic. Some of these places have excellent gourmet food, some have excellent homey food, some have pretty lousy food. A lot of these restaurants are comfortable, and several are in my mind because of particular times there with friends. Don't expect straight-up restaurant reviews: my tastes aren't quite in that sphere, and the fact that I'm vegetarian makes it difficult for me to give many restaurants honest judgment. I just enjoy eating out so much that I thought it'd be worth talking about a few of the places I've enjoyed the most.
This list is organized in order of cities I've lived in, and is therefore more-or-less chronological. There are also a few miscellaneous restaurants in places I've visited. If you only have a moment, jump down to my all-time favourite place, Le Bistro Montage.
The amazing dinner I had there was the last week he was open, on a Wednesday. Almost no one was there, I thought the place would be mobbed! They were serving porcinis, picked by Fabio himself (illegal, by the way, but on the last week they were open I guess they weren't worried). Grilled and coated in a slightly sweet, rich reductino of some sort, served on a bed of firm pasta with spicy hot oil. Absolute heaven. The waiter was really kind to us, too, bringing us extra wine when we needed it and understanding our enjoyment of the dinner.
Fabio has opened a new place called "The Grill". I hear it's quite good - looks to be a bit simpler, a little less expensive.
My favourite thing at Pasqual's is their red chile, a complex blend of dusky and hot flavours that's got as much depth to it as a fine red wine. They've got some "secret ingredient" that gives the chile a special depth and dark colour; they assure me it's not chocolate, so my buest guess is coffee. My usual breakfast is the Huevos Motuleños, a kind of better huevos rancheros. Corn tortilla with black beans, an egg, fried bananas, cilantro, and lots of chile. I tend to order it with red chile, which I suppose is blasphemy, but the red at Pasqual's is so good it's worth it. Between the huevos, a cinnamon roll, coffee and orange juice I've eaten enough for the whole day.
But the food's not the reason you go - you go because it's 2AM and you're tired and hungry and you want coffee and something to munch. For that, it's miles better than Denny's. The scene there is wonderful, a unique blend of old New Mexico, people travelling through, and university students. Very comfortable. I just did an Alta Vista search for "Frontier Restaurant" (1/23/96) and turned up 10 references - a well loved place.
The conventional Montage opens at 6PM, doing a brisk business for yuppies who've heard it's somehow the In place to be. They sit down and have their $25 entree with their $40 bottle of wine, talk about their yuppie things. Sure, your waiter might have a nose ring or green hair, but that just means that you've briefly escaped your Vanagon lifestyle for a moment of hipness.
That's the conventional Montage. My Montage began at 11PM, after all the yuppies had gone home. On a typical evening it would be midnight and I'd been working at Reed on the Relaxation Dynamics of Lattice Spin Systems for far too long. I'd get on my bike and ride home, and find my housemates Chris and Celeste and say "hey, want to go to the Montage? Chris, do you mind driving?"
More often than not the answer would be yes, and Jemiah or Karl would be around, and we'd drag our school-wearied selves to the Montage at 1AM where we would have to wait in line for 20 minutes for a table. That was fine, because all of our friends would be there too, and the food was worth the wait.
Upon being seated the waiter (an ex-Reedie, typically) would bring us freshly baked loaves of bread along with a nice Bordeaux. Celeste and Jim would order some mussell shooters, the waiter shouting above the smoke and noise "two be they!". We'd sit around and yack, eating good bread and slurping shellfish and cocktail sauce.
Eventually, at a civilized time, our order would come up. I almost always got spicy mac, macaroni cooked perfectly with a spicey cajun gravy. The plain mac-and-cheese there was also quite good. See, the macaroni was the $2 flipside of the $25 alligator etouffee, significant if you're a poor college student. And excellent macaroni it was, made with originality, care and style. Desert was the best part, the absolute most fantastic bread pudding there ever was. I'm spoiled on it now. Crusty, rich bread pudding made fresh when you ordered it, liberally doused at the last crispy moment in a rum and butter sauce.
Montage was an important place for me, an oasis of civility and sophistication in our otherwise grungy college student lives. The magic of Montage is that the place is open until 5AM. They did an excellent business during normal dinner hours so they could afford to let student types come in after 11PM and live it up. The owners of the Montage are fine people, devoted to serving excellent food with love.
This period of restaurant heaven occurred two years ago - since that time, Montage has moved to a bigger place and may well be consumed by its own hipness. It seems to still be going strong, though, and I wish them a long and happy existence.
Nelson Minar <nelson@santafe.edu> Last modified: Thu Mar 28 11:33:07 MST 1996
